White-tailed Eagle
by LawrenceSnake
Summary: After the war for our existence, the Hunter is remade in pulchritude. She's never found a home to call her own, though she has had many families. And 'one' agenda. Protect the future of sentient-kind, against any threat. But perhaps she longs for peace... at least for a little while. Until something crawls out from the dark to persecute those she loves. To them I say: time to pray.
1. The Woman Who Died

**Disclaimer: Respective characters and properties belong to Gunpei Yokoi, (R.I.P), Makoto Kano and Joanne Katherine Rowling.**

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><p><em>Dedicated to my brother, Duncan Orlando. Reach for the Stars.<br>_

**White-Tailed Eagle**

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><p><strong>The Woman Who Died<strong>

_We are infinitesimal. The smallest and the largest beings to have ever lived. Tiny, mortal, divine... yet _we_ have given consciousness to the Universe. Through ideas and perspectives, beliefs and observances. We, as a whole, are God. Or maybe the entirety of creation - both animate and inanimate as a unified entity - is God. I wouldn't know... I've lived too long... right now I'm nothing. Stardust and Radiance fields catapulted through the singularity point at the end of the greatest war our galaxías kýklos had - or would ever experience._

_My mind plays tricks on me. If it can still be called that... I've reached beyond the mundane before - but this is a whole new level. A whole _new_ mission._

_The madmen philosophers and addled mystics got one thing right though. We are more than crude matter, or maybe only some of us can be... I'm off topic. Apologies. Oh yes! Biology may call most of the shots, but I've trusted in the bending of the laws of physics since I was three years old. We can do anything. _Anything_ we can imagine. I am dead. But I've died many times before._

_And Death and I - well... let's just say we have an understanding...  
><em>

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><p><em>The Sol System, GSD 4.6 000 000 000 CXV, Planet Gaia, Local Julian Calendar: Friday, November 28th, 1947 CE <em>

The curvature of the sphere was barely illuminated by the young yellow star reacting light years away. Upon her dark and light faces there was not a single object to be found among the upper dusky blue atmosphere which blanketed her denizens. It would be six years until the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 and in turn launch the Space Race, and Humanity, to the next step of their inexorable evolution.

But now, a legend and a ghost would prove testament to their future success. A child returning home. Fully grown... and now lost.

Among the twinkling balls of life issued one that moved at a speed beyond description. Neon cyan and glowing with the power and energy of a lost race. It flared mightier than the sun as it eclipsed the event horizon of Mother Earth and, if possible, shone all the brighter as it streaked through the stratosphere; slowing against the chemical and magnetic blanket.

Gravity took over and began to pull the celestial object towards the Northern hemisphere while trailing a freshly oxygenated, flaming cobalt comet tail. Bio-luminescent rays illuminated the clouds a Persian green, sweeping them along in a cyclonic wake as the rapidly oscillating temperatures clashed with the free flowing ice crystals; eliciting lightning sparks that only added to the majesty of the scintillating meteor's glowing ablation route. Luckily for the sleeping populace of the British Isles - the shooting star was headed for a collision course with its polarising attractor, a deep black lake in the heart of the Scottish highlands. Its dark waters thrumming with the liquid counter-stance that would stop an explosion capable of wiping out every last living thing on the surface of the planet.

Loch Dubh's nearly still skein shimmered and sparkled as the early morning night sky was split asunder. The great comet bathed the surrounding mountains and the imposing, crenelated castle with its brilliance, its travel marked with the sound of a million avalanches - woke nearly everyone from their beds.

While the following impact event certainly roused the rest as the newly christened meteorite struck the huge body of water. Trees in the nearby Toirmiscthe Forest were uprooted as the shock-wave not only sent a quarter of the lake's water pluming upwards in a hundred foot geyser but shattered several of the enchanted unbreakable windows in the keep's great hall.

In his high tower office, the immensely elderly Headmaster of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Professor Armando Dippet - was sent rolling out of his own four poster. Not only due to the earthquake tremors shaking the building from battlement to dungeon depths; but due to the institute's wards being seamlessly bypassed with an immense magical backlash to his person.

"Merlin!" the geriatric warlock gasped, never in his three hundred years had he felt such _power_...

From within his oval study, he heard the office door swing open and the voice of his deputy, Albus Dumbledore, call out: "Armando! You have to see this!"

As fast as his wizened frame could carry him - Dippet threw on a robe over his nightshirt and staggered through the curtained partition of his sleeping quarters.

Albus's gaze was fixed out of the panes of the latticed glass main window. A turquoise glow reflecting off his startlingly sky blue eyes and long auburn beard. Dippet joined his taller colleague to see the black lake roiling with some great light emitting force; dull at the edges of the shore but positively burning with light at the centre - throwing an incredible ripple light fresco effect onto the ancient walls.

A column of super-heated steam rose from the loch. Dippet turned, wide-eyed and terrified to face a wary yet intrigued Dumbledore.

"What could have done this, Albus?" he gasped, clutching his heart.

Albus was pensive but his answering reply was tinged with that same maddening curiosity that caused him to look beyond the mundane of the Wizarding world... not to mention why many considered him a dopey old loon.

"Something beyond our ken, Headmaster... with your permission I'll assemble Ogg and the rest of the faculty to investigate this anomaly. The selkies will surely aid us as well... if they haven't all been obliterated at ground zero."

"Oh good heavens!"

"It is _possible_. But I think not, Armando. We would have_ all_ been destroyed otherwise... no, I think a form of synthesis is taking place here - and the Black Lake is its crucible..."

Under the water there was an amorphous many blue-shaded orb of organic gel, alien mineral deposits and anti-matter charged energy fields congregating together. Looping and twisting, re-shaping and re-forming under an invisible sculptor's hand while casting distorted shadows over the sea bed; such was the intensity of its light-emitting properties. Currents of power vibrating outwards caused the Merpeople to hide at the entrances of their grottoes in superstitious awe.

Inside the castle, the Ravenclaw students got a birds-eye view of the event from their tower dormitories, while the Slytherins got an even better view from their lens-flaring, aquatic port-holed common room. Not that the Prefects could keep charge of _any_ of the awakened children, teenagers and young adults. Gryffindor and Hufflepuff weren't left out either; rushing to find the nearest south facing windows they could and press their young features against - to witness a spectacle like no other.

For now, the rim of the clouds moved at speed, the eye of god growing smaller as they darkened grey, then black, filling with precipitation before the heavens opened, releasing pouring rain, bolts of lightning touched the now turbulent lake; accompanied by rumbling thunder moments later.

Deep below, the mass coalesced into a white-blue glowing nervous system and three-nuclei, six hemisphere, interconnected brains. The blood-delivery circulatory system came next, followed by primary organs of formidable size and healthy robustness. Large particles drew up skeletal support, density unparalleled as well as cartilage, sinew, tendons, small bones, bizarre membranous muscle groups where digestive tracts and secondary organs would be located on any normal Hominid were omitted in favour of resilient and in-humanly flexible cell structures. Light flowed through the being's veins and under new skin as it covered hard flesh, subcutaneous tissue molded to anatomical perfection, pathways connecting to diamond hard, short finger and toe nails, along with the sharp, slightly angled, _dangerous_ features of an apex predator.

The woman. For she had rock solid curves at her hips and chest despite being as lean as a young honey badger, with perfect, unmoving proportions that would make Aphrodite herself jealous of this creature. Yes, she was beautiful; in the same way a snow leopard or a timber wolf was beautiful.

Her magnificent, supine, naked form drifted into a foetal position. Epidermis smoothly transitioning between the opaque solidarity of a mammal and the translucency of the Phylum Cnidaria. Eventually the light show faded to nearly nothing. With just the slightest pulses momentarily highlighting arteries and capillaries. Across her bald skull, a fuzz the colour of barley wheat at sunset was already beginning to spread, lengthening until golden locks hung to the small of her back. Her skin as unmarred as a babe's; free of goosebumps.

Any and every creature in that freezing cold water didn't _dare_ approach, even while unconscious and sedentary, what they instinctively knew this female animal to be.

The top of the food chain.

Slowly but surely, natural buoyancy began to draw her up to the rain scorched surface. Tossed on the waves, the party of teachers and support staff could just see the figure through the driving wet bullets. They were helming three magical boats usually reserved for the first years' induction to the sorting ceremony so as to retrieve the stranger - while the students with personal Omnioculars were badgered to pass them around.

Albus cast a levitation charm but to his surprise, the woman did not float from the lake; all their water-repelling enchantments had been disrupted as well by whatever wavelength the comet had produced. Resulting in them all being as bedraggled as the star nymph.

Instead it took both the ogrish groundskeeper, Ogg and his assistant, half-giant Rubeus Hagrid to lift her into the boat, where the deputy head conjured a blanket to cover the poor dear. Who was still completely out of it. In the dark, Albus could not see if she had visible injuries but when he attempted to light his wand tip, the Lumos flashed into static form and its accompanying jolt caused him to fumble and drop the branch of Elder. Upon retrieving it from where it had rolled up to the gunwale, the baton seemed to warm in proximity to the stranger and grow colder when taken away...

_"Who is this woman? _What_ is she...?"_ he mused as Galatea Merrythought passed him the boat's lantern to better see their mysterious guest. She was a very distinctive looking human being; one you wouldn't fail to notice in the street - and yet she seemed to posses the air of someone who could remain hidden from view if she so wished. It was times like these he thought, (while he tucked her in with an extra blanket and overhead canvas tarp to keep the rain off her.) That he was extremely glad that his youthful indiscretions with Gellert had remanded him a doddery asexual eccentric.

Soon enough, they had reached the castle and proceeded to take the female straight to the hospital wing. On a stretcher carried between six of the younger and stronger Professors. She was _a lot_ heavier than she seemed. Students were bouncing up and down to get a good look at the woman who fell to earth but were all soon shepherded back to their dormitories by members of staff.

Hogwarts's current physician, the kindly, brown bearded Healer, Évariste Lamar, quickly ushered the party to the nearest gurney. Once they laid the woman down, and had left him alone with his patient; the French Wizard cast a suite of diagnostic spells to ascertain her condition. All of them turned up blank. Undeterred, Lamar used a custom foe-glass to scan for hidden curses that could be affecting her, eventually he detected a nodule of magical energy embedded in the broad, taut muscles of the woman's back; underneath where the scapula joined the collarbone. It started to glow, a red circle of dull vein show-casing light; similar to when one shines a torch up close to one's finger-tips.

Whilst the rest of the staff waited outside the clinic, Lamar sanitised the area with antiseptic potion and muttered: "Diffindo." Surprisingly still, nothing happened. With no other recourse, he turned to the Muggle method. His ordinary scalpels bent and dulled against her skin as well, it took one of Goblin manufacture to finally make the first incision. The golden haired female was silent and unmoving throughout the operation, though Lamar had plied her with local anesthetic; just in case.

Ever so carefully, the Hogwarts doctor removed a small golden, oval yet thick disc from underneath her flesh with a pair of forceps - and dropped the strange amulet in a metal tray. Before he could apply concentrated Dittany, the wound sealed itself, flecks of blood evaporating as if they had never been there. The healer took a step back, his brain refusing to believe what his eyes had just shown him. No humanoid creature he knew of could recover_ that_ quickly.

After indeed confirming that the wound was utterly gone, Lamar exited the curtained cubicle and begun to run the talisman under a jet of water from the sink, most washed off, what gore remained dissolved of its own accord.

The amulet was curved at the corners and intricately carved with a multitude of glyphs, patterns, even tiny etchings on both sides - and at the centre, there was what appeared to be a lightning bolt 'S' symbol; full of even tinnier lettering. On the reverse side was a circular collection of twelve different sized, geometric runes coming together to make a whole. Curious, Lamar retrieved his medical foe-glass and examined the artifact up-close. Though it revealed no hidden grammyre, suddenly, every hair-thin vein of the minute scripture began to glow a Kelly green, momentarily dazzling the physician through the telescopic lens.

He turned the artifact away and as he did, it beamed one sentence of misty luminous script onto the wall. Évariste couldn't make heads or tales of the lime neon scratchings, but the strange device certainly proved that this woman was a rare and powerful sorceress to have crafted such an artifact - not to mention her other unusual abilities...

Pursing his lips, Lamar stepped out of his office and headed over to his patient. He drew back the curtain.

She was gone.

But not for long.

He hadn't even heard her footsteps, she may have been barely coherent but she was _fast_. And _inhumanly_ strong. The doctor was seized from behind and swung, or was he thrown? The impact was colossal - into the nearby wall - the stone colliding with the back of his head. Dimly he realised that she was roaring in a language he couldn't comprehend while pulling him off his feet. When iron fingers closed around his throat he attempted to shout in English, hoping to calm the woman. Though her choking him made his cries come out strangled.

"You're _safe!_ This is a - school! You were in the lake! We - we pulled you out!"

Pinned and bent backwards over a tall filing cabinet, a large talon of a hand cutting off Lamar's air supply - the woman glared at him; with eyes that had seen far too much. Demanding and questing in that strange tongue of hers.

An idea sprang to the forefront of Évariste's now swimming mind as black spots began to dance in front of his vision, he repeatedly spluttered out a quick phrase in the first foreign language that popped into his oxygen-starved mind. Slovenian.

"Jaz sem prijatelj! Jaz sem prijatelj!" _{"I'm a friend! I'm a friend!"}_

To his surprise, she released him instantly.

He slumped onto all fours, shaking all over before delivering several sharp coughs in relief. He could see that the tall stranger was moving past him. She crouched suddenly as if she were a large cat ready to pounce, muscle bunches standing out in high relief against her skin; like fine blades etched softly into water-tamped velvet. No-one had even been able to _dry_ her magically.

Lamar turned to see Minnie McGonagall out of bed, the tawny haired Scottish lass had been in the wing due to a Qudditch run-in with a bludger, a roll of bandages wrapped around the twelve year old's crown. But the nearly teenage girl, such an exact and rigid student even among her elderly peers was displaying her comparative youth while she stood and stared - clutching a tartan teddy; understandably frightened of this strange human creature who had been strangling a member of staff and who was now viewing her with a quizzical tilt of her golden-maned head.

The woman spoke quietly, soothingly: "ná bíodh eagla ort, beag amháin. Tá siad ag imithe, tá muid saor in aisce." Lamar did not know a word of Gaelic, and Minnie frowned at the newcomer's statement, though its sincerity seemed to calm her enough to make her take an inquisitive step forward. Mesmerised.

The woman towered over Minnie even while sat on her haunches, balanced as she was on the tips of her toes. It was as if gravity didn't have the same pull on her form. She extended a ropey arm slow but sure and offered an outstretched hand to the student while the healer could only watch this strange transition.

The unknown Saviour of the Universe sighed in happiness as the child took her hand. Contact of a peaceful nature ensuring she was still a part of something wholesome and right, everything that was _worth_ protecting.

Within moments the girl was asleep again in her hospital bed and the woman sat on the edge of her own. Clothed in shadow.

"Where am I?" she posited. Harsh, a command. She possessed no discernible accent.

"The British Isles. Scotland," Évariste rubbed his neck tenderly.

"Huh, these surroundings... what year is it?"

"... Nineteen, forty seven. But why would you nee - "

"I am sorry about our altercation, my mind was not as lucid as usual and my thoughts are _still_ not completely clear. Forgiveness must be asked if I hurt you."

"Think nothing of it, occupational hazard." Then, remembering, he drew out the strange token from his pocket. "This was in your back, can you tell me what it is?"

She observed the medallion critically and before Lamar could blink she had snatched it from his hand. "Yes, I think I could - but I won't. This is - precious to me."

Within the next second she was stood tall as if to leave, Lamar plucked up his renewing courage and spoke up to her.

"My dear, please. You've just been through an awful ordeal. You need to rest."

She came to a curious halt at his concern, then sat down once more, slowly. With that same deliberate purpose. She made the simple motion look like an extreme act of defiance and he knew without a doubt that she was humoring him. This was a woman who did not know the meaning of sloth. The Hogwarts medicine man pulled the bed covers over her to preserve her modesty, a fact that seemed to amuse her further. Though she seemed to be in the prime of her life, she had extensive laughter creases that sometimes popped into life; as if remembering how to express themselves.

"Very good. Now, I am Dr. Évariste Lamar, healer of this fine institution, what is your name, ma chère?"

" - I ..." Her emotionless features had collapsed into a momentary blanch of fear as her crow's eyes stood out hard then softened. But it was so quick Lamar wondered if he had imagined it.

"What's your name?" he stated insistently, then with a more gentle timbre he repeated his question softly: "... what's your name?"

"I - I don't remember... oh, Shallah..." She began to speak in frenzied gibberish, alternating languages a mile a minute, small nick-knacks and even some beds began to levitate; much to Lamar's consternation; before she fell away in a dead faint.

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><p>"Évariste," Dumbledore said in a hushed voice as his old friend from the Second World War exited the hospital wing. "What news?"<p>

"She is a strange one. I can't determine anything for certain. Her physiology seems to reject most of the Power's ambiance despite having an accidental magical episode of her own. On top of all this she has a moderate case of retrograde amnesia regarding the very foundation of her distinct personality - apart from that she is - very well adjusted; all things considering."

"Could she be a threat to us, to the students?"

"Perhaps... she nearly broke my spine. The dame is as strong as a half-giant; stronger, even."

Albus stroked his beard, inferring... "could she have had military training?" He knew of only a few people, (apart from himself,) that had had such presence and self-command, not to mention being participant to such large-scale magical experimentation. This was the only feasible reason Albus knew of to explain her disruptive, and hopefully temporary, influence on wand-lore.

"Hard to say. I doubt she'd tell us off the bat. She's inordinately intelligent for one; an omniglot if I'm not mistaken. Probably your equal if not your superior at language translation. Even that small piece of information is illuminating. She's multi-talented, resourceful, charismatic. Dangerous..."

"I can't wait to meet her!" Albus twinkled inanely, rubbing his hands together.

When they re-entered the ward, they were both surprised to find their guest clinging to the wall above the double doors after about ten minutes of frantic searching. She sat against the twenty five foot wall with her feet and buttocks planted like you or I would lie on the floor, arms rested on toned thighs - her astonishing dark cerulean malachite streaked eyes absorbing every detail.

If Albus had to guess, he would have said she was in her late thirties to mid-forties judging by the age lines around her eyes but he was reminded that one should never judge a book by its cover. For one, Albus himself would be sixty six in a few months and didn't look a day over thirty five discounting his waist length beard. The second most apparent factor to take into account: was the fact that her still naked form radiated a spiritual vigour that wasn't quite aligned with the forces of most magic, but for a distinguished Aura Reader such as he, was overwhelming compared to most magical cores. No intrinsically arcane manipulation would affect her. He had thought the lake full of this alien power after the meteorite had melted into its depths but the individual observing him from on high was in fact the very source of these wave lengths!

"If you wake the girl. You _will_ leave," she stated dispassionately.

"Good evening, my dear. Perhaps, if you would be so kind as to come down. We could confer even more quietly?"

She didn't budge.

" - What _is_ this place?"

"You are in my school for the gifted. A school of _magic_."

"Magic. A word for scientific fields one can't comprehend. You understand it, don't you, teacher?"

"Very intimately, yes."

"Then it's _not_ magic."

"Well, you have me there, my good woman, but we truly have no other word for it, I'm afraid."

"I see. _This_ - is not familiar to me."

"You are not a Witch?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"You are a Muggle?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"A Muggle, a _non-magical_ human being."

Though her features remained impassive, her following words carried warning and weight. "That sounds like a racial slur... never utter it in my presence again. And no; I do not think I can claim to be that _either_. One should be careful not to segregate into absolutes."

"Then you have found a like-minded personality. Évariste here tells me that you have displayed abilities most... obscure..."

The golden lady descended and explained what she knew of her own happenings. They were cryptic to say the least. Wrapped in half-truths and misdirections. She did not react like most Muggles would when confronted with a Transfiguration example of their abilities or a Conjuration of clothing. A look of polite puzzlement crossed her face when she point-blank refused to wear the robes they offered her, stating that she was acclimatising to energy currents within the castle and could map her surroundings better without. She said this with such seriousness that both men could only accede. At least until Madame Pompfrey, Lamar's protegee and eventual replacement, nearly re-woke the faculty upon seeing their patient walking around in the buff.

Somewhat irately, their mysterious stranger materialised a pair of olive khaki trousers and a white tank top, as well as a black corduroy jersey with synthetic grey shoulder patches. The garments hugged her frame far too tightly for the prudish practitioner's comfort. But they were _greatly_ appreciated by one of the males present. She still walked, silent and bare-footed around the wing and would sometimes scale the walls and perform balance beam gymnastics on the vaulted ceiling rafters, cup an ear to the walls or floors like a Plains Native American, she even tasted the stone dust rubbed off a column with her index finger. Upon which she determined the exact age of the West Wing down to when the keystone had been laid.

Introductions followed, the stranger was polite enough. Though when he presented several others that had been present in her retrieval, including the maintenance team, Professor Diggle of Muggle Studies and the matron in more than a customary instigation, the woman couldn't contain herself.

"Let me understand... Daedalus Diggle?" she pointed at the man quickly, "Poppy Pompfrey?" acknowledging the nurse with a click of her fingers. She turned to Dumbledore. "Even the girl's name is Minerva McGonagall. So what do they call you? Bumble Bee?" she sniffed in good humour. "This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm out of here."

She moved to exit the wing, only for the Keeper of Keys to stand in her path, his chest thrown out. Though he was seven foot eight, it was the nameless stranger who seemed to tower over him personality-wise.

"So you're Ogg, huh?" She seized his lapels before anyone could blink and lifted him clean off the floor to everyone's accompanying horror: she brought her face offensively close to the massive skull of the groundskeeper. "You want to get out of my way?" she stage-whispered. The ogre gulped, looking to the deputy for help. Diplomatic as always, Dumbledore managed to get their guest to put his staff member down and agree to stay at Hogwarts for a little longer while she recovered.

"I don't _need_ medical attention."

"Of course. But you must surely be hungry after your ordeal."

"Thank you for the charity but it's not necessary."

"Well I'll have to _insis_t, my dear. Please, indulge me."

She raised a tuft yet sharp eye-brow at his offer, before an idle shrug signaled an acceptance of Wizarding hospitality. Before long, the school's House Elves had brought her and the Headmaster plates of half a braised duck in plum sauce, served with red and yellow peppered couscous and buttery garlic mushrooms. Albus only had to look away for a moment before their mystery stranger inhaled the whole meal silently. He chuckled as she stared at her spit clean dish somewhat guiltily.

Albus indulged her quirks, lord knows he had enough of his own, asking her questions all the while: where did she come from? Why was she here? How did she keep her hair in such excellent condition? Though she could not answer the first two, she stated that her powers seemed to keep her well groomed and consistently clean if she so wished. In fact, there was not much she _couldn't_ do with her wandless magic, from the urbane to astonishingly complex manipulations of the temporal and metaphysical world. She proved this well enough when, on her second day in the castle, she stopped Peeves from pranking her, nearly dissolving his 'ectoplasmic incarnation with dark energy molecule warping.' Whatever that meant. The fact that the poltergeist was now more respectful of her than the Headmaster or even the Bloody Baron, left her very popular with the children who would seek her protection from the malevolent spirit. Accordingly, the brilliant old Wizard determined that she was a foreign magic-user of prodigious strength and intellect and could hardly contain himself from wanting to place her on the staff immediately.

But his guest would not accede to anything until her memories were returned and or at the very least; knew her own name once more. That - and she was an explorer of the highest order. For the first week, the stranger unearthed the topography of the entire state and grounds, mapping secret passage-ways, invisible doors and ever-shifting rooms. She would go for long treks through the dales and rough terrain around the castle, sometimes alone, or accompanied by Ogg and Hagrid. The students found her a joy, for she was drawn to any instances of bullying and could stop the perpetrators cold by her presence alone. None would challenge a person who could call Peeves 'Jingle-boy'. Sometimes, standing in the courtyard for morning break they would see her clambering up the misted battlements with frightening grace, even leaping huge distances from spire to gargoyle steps, though it was a rare occurrence that she let herself be seen. Albus remembered in those early days, two instances most vividly: one being the morn where she balanced by one arm at a nigh-impossible angle from the astronomy tower's weather-vane and began to exercise placidly with contained, serene power. And two, when she dived nude into the Black Lake and swam fifty laps of the great body of ice water without even tiring.

Intrigued, Albus and the staff tried their utmost to uncover their guest's past, but although her presence had lost the edge that blunted all other magic, she herself remained as resilient against all efforts to charm or coerce remembrance through both spells and potions. Much to her immediate consternation.

After twenty one days living at Hogwarts, Brian found Nameless poring over a collection of obscure texts in the restricted section of the library; he had discovered only a few days before when she had waited for him inside his warded office; that any enchantments or defensive magics, no matter how powerful, could be ignored by her. She was truly extraordinary.

"And how are we doing today, my dear?"

"... Fine." Nameless didn't even look up from where she stood over the charts and writings.

"You know dinner is already being served, you'll miss it again."

"Something I've noticed that is definitely different from my past; I don't need to eat at all. I only partake occasionally to make everyone else feel comfortable. Not that I don't appreciate the fare, it _is_ excellent. Pity the same can't be said for your tomes on astrology and astronomic phenomena, based on my last recollections I came from space."

"Astonishing..." Dumbledore whispered, although he couldn't say whether it was due to her outlandish conclusion or the paper he had just begun to make sense of. It was a massive parchment scroll stuffed full of fresh, elegantly written Arithmantic calculations, most of which even he could not make hide nor hair of.

"What do we have here. Did you write this? So it's all starting to come back, yes?"

"No, those calculations are like everything else, I find something and it just clicks into place. The same way I can perform advanced calculus for applications that supposedly don't even exist, I can reason, I can deduce, I can strategise - "

"Yes, yes, it is all coming back to you - "

"No-it's-not-coming-back-to-me-god-dammit-that's-the-point," Nameless snapped quietly, but with such clarity and power it might as well have been a guttural bellow of frustration. "I have been here for weeks, looking through all this - this _useless_ rubbish!" she punctuated by sweeping the scrolls and grimmoires off the workspace. "It's not working! I don't even know _what_ to look for!" The woman with no name calmed as fast as she had erupted, Albus tried to smile grimly as he helped her pick up the scattered material, all things considered; she looked somewhat ashamed by her lapse of control.

"Forgive me, Albus, that was out of turn."

"Nonsense, my dear. You have suffered more than most. That I _can_ see, an impossible grief that has strangled your remorse and hardened you against the world. But I have watched you these past few weeks, how you treat others around you and I _do_ know that you are of purest heart, no being of malign intent may enter these walls and, though I may flatter myself, I am absolutely sure of the unvarnished capacity for love that you possess, no-one can endure this life without it."

"Perhaps. Though you would probably think less of me if I told you how I perceive and utilise my own emotions. It was how I wished to be - and my - guardians - obliged... how... ?"

"You see? It _will_ come back."

"What if it doesn't? ... I can tell you the names, positions and serial prints of _every_ book in this library, I can tell you that the new caretaker, Apollyon Pringle, weighs two hundred and fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best places to find components to successfully construct a fully-functioning tier eight illegal firearm plus munitions in the potions laboratories and the inner-workings of that self-repairing clock tower of yours. And - at this altitude, I can run flat out for _six hundred miles_ before my hands start to shake. Now why would I know that? _How_, can I know _all that_ and _not_ know _who I am_?"

Dumbledore was silent for only a moment: "It seems to me then - that you would definitely know; _where_ to start looking."

* * *

><p>Upon a high cliff at the heart of Toirmiscthe, Nameless studied the artifact she knew to be hers but for what purpose, she could not divine. Meditation followed, and after three hours of contemplation she looked upon the medallion with a fresher gaze, she concluded that Lamar had activated the device through close proximity to focused magic. Summoning a smidgen of her own telekinetic talents, she was rewarded with glowing scripture that infused every line. Nameless responded with the only tic she couldn't control, a feral yet twitching grin that lasted all of a half second, none who spoke with her could tell whether it was an expression of happiness or of pain. It was used so frequently in differing situations, otherwise she was a neutral mask.<p>

Studying the beamed message, Nameless understood the language written instantaneously. The language of her true family and then the bits and pieces flew back into place; her mind beginning to truly recover from the reanimation of her body. Dextrous fingers found the hidden nanoscopic buttons along the grooved surface and within moments the piece of technology had expanded through dimensional compression to the size of two put together discus's; now here was a magic she understood well.

Neon mist hissed from every crevice as the device opened along several changing vectors, the complexity, breath-taking.

Nameless sat with crossed legs, feet upturned, resting the receptacle on her lap as she sorted through the wealth of content inside: what she was imminently drawn to were several chains adorned with metal stamped identification tags. She set them aside to pursue first; for the rest just seemed like old clutter in comparison. Eager as she was for a solid title to grasp onto.

However, to her annoyance the information upon them contradicted, some were etched with crude titles that boasted of bloody deeds and others yet seemed like grim trophies that didn't belong to anyone. But she did have a variety of female names to pick out from ID chips that just _had_ to be pseudonyms, for she liked them all: Dianne Greer, Yehuwdiyth Luigia, Claudia Rains, Soleil Jager, Ellen Hentschal, McKayla Adair and Akilina Yesfir to name just a few, the one that caught her eye, however, was a battle scarred military dog tag with the words: Shepard J. Aran, 5923-AC-2826, AB Positive, ESAMC, N7 Spec. Ops, SR-1.

That particular artifact incited more remembrance, a life of conflict and of war. And of truth.

Aran cataloged the rest of the items: an unbreakable piece of Tuchankan quartz that shone silver in the dark, a chunk of Aetherian solidified matter anti-matter, dubbed a light crystal. A beautiful ring composed of many rare-earth metals, one of such being platinum, a whetstone composed of petrified black Phazon. A beautifully embroidered bag full to bursting with a variety of seeds and collected herbs from many alien ecosystems. A thick sheaf of inflexible photographs and a Prothean memory capsule that still glowed minty energy wisps of contained recollections. Although she could sense her own brain patterns had been absorbed into the advanced ancient technology, Aran was not tempted to retrieve her past the fast and expedient way.

Instead, she explored the ambient traces retained within the Chozo relic, eventually activating a three-dimensional, teal monochrome map of the planet. Points on every continent and under every ocean were highlighted. Markers for sites of ancient alien activity long before Humanity was the dominant species to walk the Earth. At that moment, Samus knew what to do, the relic clipped to an invisible cybernetic tattoo on her broad back before being assimilated into her organism, within Aran was a contained power, stronger than the crushing forces at the core of Gaia, mightier than the magnetic seas scouring the atmosphere and more powerful than the lightning of heaven.

Technological scripts in a tongue only she could understand beamed instantly onto her retinas, and Samus Aran truly smiled for the first time since she had arrived. Things were about to get _very_ interesting...

**Main Bio-Nervous Circuit Restored. Power Connection At Optimal Radiance Field Capacity - Welcome - Samus Virginia Aran  
><strong>

**Full Systems Review Initiated...**

**Chozo Battle Suit Ver. SA1-4468-VM7-P... Biometrics In Molecular Flux... Initialising... **

**Liquid Based Central Processing Unit: Active - Gathering Data... Two New Electrically Conductive Cerebrums Detected - Compensate For New Intel - ONLINE  
><strong>

**Multiple Eye And Minute Muscular Targeting Systems: Active - Marshaling Auditory Filters - ONLINE **

**HUD Suite: Active - Adjusting To Earth Day & Night Cycle... Configuring Chronometer... Solar Histories Formatting - ONLINE **

**21.6 Quadrillion Pixel Resolution Camera Visors: Active - Responding... Synching With Perception Sensors - ONLINE **

**{Vision Modes: Psionic Scanner 'Glass' - Material Deep Analyzer 'Shard' - Heuristic Pin-Pointing And Digital Catalog Libraries [Chemistry - Biology - Physics - Zoological - Mechanical - Personal - Unknown] - Quantum Ionizer Shades 'Rad' - Spectral Dimension Rays 'Dark' - Sonar / Ladar Wave Emitters / Receivers 'Echo' - Infra Red Enhanced Imagery 'Heat' -**** Normal} **

**ERROR! MISSING SOLAR EXTRA-GALACTIC VESSEL UP-LINK - Remote Command Interface - OFFLINE - Currently In Hibernation  
><strong>

**(Locating Mineral Lodes For Possible Ship Construction... Two Hundred & Seventeen Found)  
><strong>

**Hacking Suite: Active - Scanning For IP Signatures... None Detected - 30KHz to 300GHz ****Radio Signal Interception & Telecommunications Transceiver - ONLINE **

**Dual Forearm Omni Tools: Active - Updating DNA Based Hardware & Software... Hard-Light Disposition and Mini-Facturing Assemblies - ONLINE **

**Nano Foundries: Active - Checking Earth Mantle For Nearest Equivalent To Possible Zebitite Alloys... Three Found - ONLINE **

**Biotic Implantation Nodes - Active - Infusion Adaptation of Element Zero Nano-Cores At 9679% Saturation - Unquantified Telekinetic Manipulation - ONLINE **

**Back Palm Mounted Sub-Zero Plasma / Energy Projector / Configuration Modules: Deployed - Inactive - Currently In Hibernation  
><strong>

**{Possible Configurations: Various Shields - Bucklers - Knuckle Dusters - Lasso - Whip - Flail - Various Blades - Medium-Range Flame Thrower - Adhesive / Siphon Grapple}**

**Interchangeable Arm Cannons: Deployed - Inactive - Currently In Hibernation **

**Ammunition Module: Deployed - Inactive - Currently In Hibernation  
><strong>

**{Listing Archived Beams - Plus Deployment Pneumonics: Power - Volt Driver - Charge Build-Up - Nova - Wide Swathe - Judicator - Cryo-Condenser - Plasma - Disruptor - Scatter-Shot - Wave - Imperialist - Taloric Grenades - Nohadin Gas Pellets - Hyper Wave Motion - Sonic - Mag-Maul - Impact Diffusion - Dark Energy - Matter-Anti Matter Warheads - Gatling Photon Rounds - Tractor - Urtragian Sulphuric Acid Darts - Nuclear Repeater - Annihilator Bursts - Biotic Gravity Gun - Discorporation Spheres - Entangler - Concussive - Slug Thrower} **

**Secondary Armaments: ******Deployed - Inactive - Currently In Hibernation {Listing... **Missile Launchers / Cannon Modules / Seeker Bays / Artillery Shoulder-Mounts / Side Knee - Back Palm & Twin Chest Sockets - Tectonic Quake Generator - Photonic Wrist Bayonets - Ultra-thermal Flame strike Projector** - **Adaptive Charge Combos - Stream Buster - **Concentrated Percolation Ultra Gauntlet (Singular Use Every Twenty Four Hour Earth Cycle)** Stacking Beam Matrix - (Missiles - Lensman Projections & Grenades)}**

**Full Armour Lock: Engaged - Inactive - Currently In Hibernation**

**{Following Armour Installations: Absolute Containment Seals Against Environmental Dangers - Plus In-Built Hazard Shield & Anti-Grav Feature - Ultra Flexible Nano-Musculature Tesselation Underlay Allows For Amplified Speed ******- Uncharted Augmented Strength *8** & Complete Freedom of Movement - Energy Tank Reservoir 99x100 Units To Enhance The Optimal Gluino Exclusion Field - Five Reserve Tanks - Selective Traction - Atomic Grip - Dimensional Compression Storage Pockets - Concentrated Nova Vents Along Tron Lines - Energy Transfer Module - Ambidextrous Simian & Avian Articulation On Both Hands & Feet - Limited Partial Morphing Capabilities Past Rotatable Joints} **

**Morph Ball: Engaged - Inactive - Currently In Hibernation**

**{Transit Modules: Locomotion Jump - Negate Friction - Shine Run - Shine Spark Flight - Instantaneous Momentum Halter - 360 Degree Gravitonic Jet Pack - Shrink Mari - Kinetic Booster - Gyro Assimilation - Uni Directional Hovering Plus Flight - Screw Attack - Personal Teleporter}  
><strong>

**ERROR! ARMOUR - WEAPONS AND MOVEMENT SYSTEMS OFFLINE - INTER-DIMENSIONAL BACKLASH HAS COMPROMISED CONTAGIOUS FILE SPACE FOR HIBERNATING APPLICATIONS - BEGINNING DEFRAGGING PROCEDURE...  
><strong>

**Estimated Time Until Completion: 32 Elliptical Cycles - 4 Lunar Orbits - 19 Earth Rotations - 6 Earth Hours - 58 Earth Minutes - 11 Earth Seconds  
><strong>

**Progression: 0.00%**

**Have A Pleasant Day! **

"Fuuuu - Fudge..." Aran growled.

* * *

><p>On her way back to the castle, she distressingly had to relate to Hagrid how she had halted a small forest fire that had consumed a large dry hollow tree near the centre of the first wood. Rubeus fled into the dark trees, sobbing. Sam took no pleasure in the task or the deception. But she would be damned if Acromantula were in the same <em>country<em> as the children living at this school, let alone a couple of leagues away from their play grounds. Hagrid was a gentle soul but rather naive when it came to treating dangerous non-native wildlife as pets.

Striding as if she were not affected by Gaia's petty limitations on the human form, Aran headed straight through the great castle's cloisters to reach the head of the Transfiguration Department's office. But a certain sight delayed her. Professor Archimedes Scamander of Charms had grasped a student roughly by the upper arm for evident misconduct, that was not what concerned her. What did it was the bamboo cane he brandished. Aran narrowed her eyes as he adjusted his hold and began to beat the raven haired boy across the calves and hamstrings, below the line of his shorts; other students winced in sympathy but didn't dare intervene. After the fifth blow, Scamander prepared to _continue_ flogging the now weeping child, only for his motion to halt as he raised the cane.

He turned to witness the mystery woman encircling his wrist with a grip of unassailable strength. Shocked, he couldn't even resist as Aran plucked the instrument of pain from his limp fingers and struck him with it once across the face, drawing a thin red angry line on his right cheek and forcing him to release the scruff of the boys robes.

"There. Hurts doesn't it?" Samus chided with a voice of iron. The Charms Professor could only clutch his face with a mixture of rage and shame. "If you need the whip to teach a child, then you are unfit to be a teacher."

"How dare - " Scamander began, but he stopped as soon as Aran's look became truly ugly, it was the mask of peace that she wore so casually being ripped aside and in that instant; Archimedes didn't know whether he'd live to see the end of that day.

"Go. You're done," Aran enunciated with slow thunder, the cane turning to dust that trickled from her fist. Outraged at the blows to his authority, Scamander practically fled down the aisle, which rung with the cheers of the children. Samus was not finished yet though, with a wave of her hand, a tiny aura of her own formidable regenerative energies was shed and lathered over the third year's bleeding legs, he stood without grimacing. Surprised at the sudden absence of pain.

"Are you alright Mr... ?"

"Potter, Ma'am. Charlus Potter. I mean - yes, Ma'am thank you very much, but... caw! You don't even know what _I did_ to deserve that."

"Was it something worthy of a biased beating, Mr. Potter?"

"Maybe..."

"A prank on your recently departed Professor?"

"How - how did you know?"

"Instinct. Corporal punishment is not enforced so zealously unless a personal harm has been wrought upon the punisher. And if he could not defend himself against your evidently embarrassing little stunt then in your minds he doesn't deserve your respect in the first place. I'm aware of how you little _monsters_ operate," she said with a disarming grin. "The playground is not so different from a battlefield."

"You've fought in battles?" the Gryffindor chirped eagerly, his friends from the house of the brave gathered at her feet to hear tales of her exploits. But Aran was not so easily misled as she leaned down to peer at the boy with startling wisdom.

"Learn your lesson, young Potter. All your life you will be beset by fools that require your unwilling obedience, never let them make you lose sight of your goals. And if you can't be safe from them - then be careful of them. If I catch you being caught again, you'll know the life of a prankster won't be in your family line. And my detention would make you research your true calling seven hours a day until you were absolutely certain. Are we clear!"

"Crystal clear, Sir! Ma'am!" Charlus squeaked as he scampered after his fleeing class-mates. _"Brave indeed,"_ Samus mused as she reached the entrance hall to look upon the panoramic window that displayed the Hogwarts animal crest in detailed stained glass of red and gold, green and silver, blue and bronze and yellow and onyx.

_"Wonderful..."_ Aran thought with a hint of scorn. _"This magnificent building is relegated to housing a school founded by a chauvinistic zealot, a gormless barbarian, an unabashed wiseacre and a psychopathic racist. No wonder the cliques are characterised by certain traits. It is ludicrously encouraged."_

* * *

><p>A few days hence, Albus had decided to meet their guest at a place of her choosing, considering he had been down in London that day. She apparently had important news to tell him and Dumbledore was quite certain of its nature. He had come to the door of her choosing and entered to find a wing of the castle he had never stepped foot in. Magic permeated the air as thickly as the dust motes blazing from the shine of white enameled window ridges. Moving between the sparse book shelves and cobwebbed desks, Albus reached a new door and entered, to find a two hundred foot tall enclosed turret room.<p>

"This building is hallowed ground, Albus. It does what it wants..." Samus remarked conversationally, reclining with nearly absurd poise on a high window ledge. Before the deputy could respond, Aran flicked a tarnished but obviously well cared for ID chip down and into his veined hands. He proceeded to examine it.

"... Citizen of... Earth Colony... K-2L... Seamus Aren?"

Sam laughed, a short snapping 'huh!' before answering Albus' unspoken question: "it's my birth name, and it's pronounced 'Ah - Rahn. Zsah - Mus, Ah - Rahn'; _Brian_," her voice dripping with friendly abashment.

"She who supplants... like an Irish feminine version of - _James_, none the less. It is a good name. Strong yet speaking of growth and adaptability." He held the marker aloft and Samus summoned it to her palm to give it pride of place around a military ball chain necklace of eclectic tags. There must have been over ten upon it.

Not wanting to reiterate his offer of employment just yet, Albus drew attention to the elephant in the room: "I have never seen this area of the castle before..."

"Peaceful isn't it? This is one of the many places I come to contemplate the Universe. There is an - _energy_ here, all en-compassing, yet profound."

"The magic of the earth revived you, Samus. This place is now a part of you."

"It couldn't be any other way." Aran dropped to the floor without even bending her knees. "It allowed me to find the heart of the castle. What the Elves refer to as the 'come and go room' and decipher its Arithmantic Runes. The power of this place, like the most powerful ghosts that haunt its halls... it is a power one cannot see... recondite powers that leave little mark of their presence. Powers that gave a Danish Geat the might of fifty men in either of his hands, that allowed a poor Hebrew carpenter's son to walk on water. Or for any individual to become immortal in both body and legend. The Earth is still yet rich with mystery for those willing to find it. And now I know this place of rest like I know myself. Utterly and ineradicably once more."

"This is very good news I take it?"

"Yes. But it means I now have to leave Hogwarts. At least for a while."

"Are you certain...?"

"There are things I _have_ to do. Places I have to visit - to put everything in perspective."

"I thought your memories had just returned?"

"They have, but they are jumbled in my mind, no order, no time. And since Veritaserum is useless on me..."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Samus. Just remember, there is _always_ a place waiting for you here."

Aran stepped forward and shook Dumbledore's proffered hand firmly: "I neglected to mention it before, but thank you, Albus. For _everything_."

"It was my pleasure, my dear."

"Enough of that 'my dear' business - I'm old enough to be your great-grandmother fifteen times over."

"Will you never cease to amaze?"

"Huh, don't hold your breath. We all have our secrets, Albus. Perhaps one day we can share them all together."

"Wouldn't you have too many to impart?"

"Never change, _old man_!"

"You as well, _old warrior_..."

* * *

><p>The following morning, Dumbledore introduced Aran to his most valued companion. Deep in the mountainous hills surrounding Hogwarts. The Phoenix, Fawkes.<p>

"You're bonded with a Mycenaean Fire Bird?" Since the first time he'd met her, Samus was reacting with clear and open wonder. "Or is it a Fenghuang?" she wondered.

Albus stroked the plumage of the magnificent animal as the beautiful familiar rested comfortably on his outstretched forearm.

"I believe _he_ is from Egypt, descended from the Solar Bennu's themselves, supposedly they were the first apostles of Ra in the creation of the world."

"Incredible. I have always had an affinity for - _birds_... not that my foster parents were even related to birds, they weren't even arthropods. They were _aliens_ in every sense of the word. Birds always remind me of _them_, not the other way around. It was the way I felt regarding Humanity; they became the _true_ aliens when I returned."

"You don't consider yourself _Human_?"

"No. Oh, I _was_. So long ago..."

"... Well. You should get along with Fawkes famously then!" And indeed, the bird had already flapped its crimson and gold wings, to alight softly on Aran's shoulder, trilling Phoenix song all the while. And Aran's spine shivered as the harmony of a Chozo monastic choir echoed through - imparting ancient strength through an inner warmth.

"You claimed it was a _he_? I thought all Phoenixes were gender neutral? Or the yin to the dragon's yang?"

"They often are, but you'll find on your travels that Fawkes communicates through mental waves. It, at least to my mind, is rather masculine in form."

"_He_ wants to come along - with _me_?"

"You don't want to walk _all_ the way, do you?"

"True, most magical means of travel don't accept my energies and I _am_ circumnavigating the entire globe..."

"Splendid! You shall both keep each other company on this odyssey of yours. How long do you think you'll be gone?"

"A few years..."

Albus's face fell.

"But I'll write to you every week!" she added hastily, having become very fond of the kind-hearted genius. Dumbledore's smile at the promise of world-wide correspondence from a being as intelligent, if not more so, than himself; could have lit the frozen wastes of Planet Cyuun. Samus, by proxy, was fulfilling one of his oldest and most cherished dreams by exploring all the culture Earth had to offer and thereafter sharing it with him. Though his reasons for travel a life-time ago had not been anywhere near as noble; even if they were both self-serving.

"That makes me very glad to hear. I of course will send replies post haste and notify you of what is occurring in the Magical community."

"It doesn't _bother_ _you_, does it? That I'm completely different from everybody else."

"We are all different, Samus. But my brother once told me, well, _shouted _at me really: 'it is not our _abilities_ that make us who we are - it is our _choices_.' I made mistakes and I paid for them, because I did not recognise the value of family, of _community_."

"Words we _all_ should live by. Your brother is very astute... for a goat-herder. ... I should go," she said with a smile of fond nostalgia.

"Travel safe and god speed to you, _Samus Aran_."

Dumbledore watched as Aran's form shrunk into the distance, crested the horizon; and was gone.

* * *

><p><em>Six years later<em>...

A ball of flame sprang into life, steaming a patch of the highland showers peppering the sparse tundra. The statuesque figure that had materialised, was garbed in a thick black travelling cloak over practical but oddly refined clothing, not anything that would have been worn in a time predominantly of tweed and wool. Her Phoenix companion roosted comfortably on her forearm, his mirage heat misting the rain drops of his newly burnished feathers. He had burned recently. The pair battled the wind and rain as they traversed the dark hillsides, September saw night coming quickly to this part of the far north but there was enough gaps through the thunderheads to witness a smattering of the aurora borealis, red, green and even the rarest blue. A fortuitous sign...

Aran mantled an ancient boulder that jutted from the rough landscape, walking the length of the volcanic plateau she looked out and across the misted landscape - to see a familiar lakeside mountain and the formidable, torch-lit keep that resided there through a curtained haze of precipitation.

Even from this distance, Aran could feel the currents of magic permeating the autumn air and loamy, moss covered earth, drenched through with the water of life. For all her ability to detect variegated conversions of energy, she could only harness one. Wizard-kind was powerful, she had no illusions regarding that, considering what she had seen in her travels, but as a society they were deeply flawed. Issues of race, blood purity, class.

It was back to the dark ages for Aran, at least in equal-opportunity outlook; but that was neither here nor there. She did not care to actively pursue evil in any of its forms anymore. But evil was evil. Lesser, greater, middling. She would know it when she saw it, and cosmically, she knew it was her lot to engage these monsters, a fate she did not begrudge.

As she neared the boundaries of the school, she reflected on the Hogwarts wards. True they would halt anyone with deliberately malign intentions from crossing into the grounds. But what of animals who operated on instinct? Fanatics who believed in the righteousness of their own destructive cause? And worst of all, those who hid beneath a thin veneer of civility, but were in reality a thousand times worse than a rabid beast. The institution had to be protected, such was the way of the world.

She had the means, and it was her duty to protect those who could not protect themselves. Inwardly, she hoped for calm, such as she had felt working in conservation, as a care worker, manual labourer, university lecturer, museum curator, explorer, guide, bodyguard, the intelligence services. Or even tinkering away with her Cornucopia inventions. And though there was no shortage of conflict upon Gaia, she had abstained from war, hell, she hadn't raised her hand in violence for the longest time in living memory. And Aran had a _long_ memory.

What worried her was that insatiable _need_ for battle, bottled beneath the surface like Yellowstone Park. Nothing compared to the moment when life could be taken and preserved through terrible and some would say _irreparable_ means. Aran was a living dichotomy, a nurturer of existence and a messenger of the last breath. A true avatar of the Reaper. And in turn, no matter the hardships she had endured; fear and love were _her_ Gods and she would never stop offering up sacrifices of both friend and foe to that two-faced bastard. Fulfillment and suffering were inevitable, so she would _never_ concede her life when her old friend had seen fit to only tease her once more with blissful oblivion. She would meet her final companion as an equal and perhaps even as an idol of her own for Death to bow down to - in return.

Reaching the castle's main gates near Hogsmeade, Aran gestured with the first two fingers of her left hand and the Gothic railings parted; creaking all the while. _"No oil,"_ Sam mused, _"must mean Hagrid has taken over as Keeper of Keys." _Rubeus was a curmudgeon. Endearing but aggravating in his priorities none the less. Though they had a shared interest in magical fauna, Aran privately wanted to make him take a serious re-evaluation of his duty to the children under his care - not to creatures unfit to be familiars.

One sodden trek up the path, over the lawns and through the entrance. Samus and Fawkes were inside and better for being out of the rain. To their right, they could hear the hubbub of the start-of-term feast.

"What say you to an entrance, Fawkes?"

The Phoenix sung a hesitant answer.

"Don't tell me you're shy!" Aran said with mock-surprise. She received a reply in the form of a shorter, even more non-committal note.

"Well," Aran continued, searching rapidly. "... Albus will be there."

Fawkes was unsure.

"You don't have to leave your perch if that's what's got you -"

Fawkes chirped happily, hopping to her right shoulder and fluttering his dazzling gold and ocher inner wing feathers.

"Alright, Newborn," she chuckled affectionately, tickling his chin and causing him to lean into her stroking digits. He enjoyed such pampering. "You can stay right there through the feast. But we need to find you a partner of your _own_ kind."

The gentle cuff around the back of her head, was the Fire Bird's rejoinder, along with a sharp whistle that appropriated for a remarkably human huff of sarcastic acknowledgement.

"And you say _I'm_ the show boater?" Aran took hold of the beautifully carved, ceiling high double doors and threw them wide.

"Now that the sorting ceremony has been completed. I have a few start-of-term notices to announce," Brian sonorously projected, so much so that his old friend had heard the exact cue for her dramatic entry: "Accordingly, our new staff appointments are - "

'BOOM!'

Albus clapped eyes on the individual framed in the Great Hall's archway. He couldn't believe that same held sight. Especially since when he had last received a letter from her, she had apparently been in the Pacific!

Students and faculty craned their necks alike to get a look at the Phoenix bearer, while some Seventh Years gaped in remembrance at the familiar face that had been etched to memory during their midnight awakening all those nights ago. For Samus had cast back her dripping cowl to reveal herself to the assembly. Her hair was shorter, just below shoulder length, scraped back and braided on one side in a thin distinctive bang. She had aged exceedingly well since her reanimation, she now stood six foot nine inches tall, broader in the shoulder, invigorated from her journey.

As Aran strode over the threshold, many students were shocked to see her Familiar but many still were even more shocked to see their usually taciturn headmaster rush from his podium, descend the teacher's dais and rush up the central isle to greet the newcomer with a kiss to both cheeks and a gentlemanly proffering of his arm to escort her to her seat of honour. (On the centre throne chair's right side.) No-one knew, but Aran and Dumbledore were discussing her placement in the faculty a mile a minute through their shared psychic link with Fawkes. There was much murmuring from both staff and student alike.

"Everyone!" Dumbledore spoke for quiet once Aran had been seated and had removed her long coat. "May I introduce a very old and capable friend; who has just returned from a half decade's world-wide adventure. Our first new, full-time multiple doctrine stand-in teacher - and successful applicant of the long considered post as Head of Security, Professor Samus Aran!"

Polite applause echoed through the hall, though some of the elder males were a bit more enthusiastic in their welcome. Aran raised a hand and summoned her commanding aura, pleased to note that most of the students quietened near instantaneously without even realising the effect she was having on them.

_"Still got it," _Sam nodded inwardly, planning to start as she meant to go on. Give a child an inch and they would take a mile. Especially since she had heard that Albus had passed a bill to get corporal punishment banned at Hogwarts, a revolutionary reform for the times. Not that Sam subscribed to physical reinforcement but she could bet some milder teachers would be taken advantage of; being a Professor or a paramilitary Commander were not so different after all.

Once the banquet had been concluded, and the students escorted to their dormitories. Dumbledore invited Aran to his first floor office off the interior courtyard for a nip of fire whiskey and to catch up.

"I thought you were headmaster, now?"

"I am in all but name," Albus said as he poured two fingers of Ogden's Finest. "Dippet was taken ill and is considering full retirement next December. The governors haven't made it official just yet, but for all intents and purposes, I am the Head of this fine boarding house."

"Huh. You look worse for wear, old timer. A full-time political career _and_ running this place. It's no wonder you've gone grey before your time."

"We cannot all be as lucky as you, Samus. You haven't aged a day."

"Thank you," Aran replied, accepting the shot glass from the white beard. "You have a deputy?"

"_You_ have enough responsibilities with keeping us safe and learned, not to mention your - _side projects_."

"That's not a 'yes'."

"I will look into it and I _will_ hand over some of my duties in the Wizengamot to friends of my family."

"Just like that... I've convinced you," Aran stated sceptically.

"Why do you think I rejoiced at your return? You're the only one who can, my dear."

"It seems someone has to. You'd work yourself into an early grave otherwise." She studied the many lengths of meticulous script-stuffed parchment littered over the aging wizard's desk. Aran looked up.

"It seems that academia is not the worst of your problems either," she noted. "Who is this young man?" she posited, picking up the file to examine it closer while downing her drink.

"A former alumnus of this school, a prodigy. There have been - _disturbing_ reports of his activities; both on the continent and here on the mainland."

"Blood purist?"

"Worse. He's a leader of men. A Tin Hitler if I ever saw one, relying on prejudices, past grievances and hide-bound tradition to gather extremist support from both the underclasses and the houses of the Wizengamot, along with collecting those in high-profile Ministry positions."

"You've been curtailing his power politically?"

"Yes, old friend. But I am tired of saving others from their own mistakes. I learned long ago the cost of manipulation on a grand scale."

"Some would argue that government-sanctioned education is one step away from such propaganda."

"True, but the lines between enlightenment and zealotry are difficult to distinguish at best. The Ministry has no active presence within these halls. Hogwarts could be the staging ground of a revolution that would see the end of wizard-kind; or it could mark the resurgence of a society of tolerance and peace."

"And you say the game still holds no interest for you, Dumbledore... it will and always has concerned me to look to young ones futures, people in our position can enjoy the time given to us. But we live for others first, guidance, protection, sometimes - even intervention. I want to know which page you're on, Albus. Why do you want to secure the future? And what are you willing to sacrifice to protect it?"

"... My family... moved to Godric's Hollow in 1889, there had been an - _incident_ in our home prior."

* * *

><p>Two hours later, Aran exited Dumbledore's office, musing on the history her friend had related. He had waited to tell that story for many long years. Aran could work quite comfortably with a redeemer. She had been one herself. No man alive could get a lie passed the Hunter. It did make social interaction somewhat prosaic, but then again, even Aran could not defend against experienced liars of omission...<p>

Liars, betrayers, traitors: she had been both the deceived and the deceiver. While she would ally with this man, she was her own agent of change. Never again would she demean her integrity by fawning at the feet of those of position and rank. She made what was deserved of the world and fought against upset and chaos, but then, when one such as she had the power to change the world - what could one do to live with one's self if they didn't try to make it a better place?

Although Aran had concealed quarters within the castle, by painstakingly re-creating the Arithmantic Runes that conjured the Room of Requirements adaptive flux space to her at any time. She had also sealed the original room by altering its glyphs and had decided to set up a permanent home-away-from-home within the Forbidden Forest.

So within a couple of days, Aran had raised a comfortable cabin for herself in the foothills of the wooded mountains. Utilising a Chozo fusion of future technology and natural materials, her very comfy nest was soon complete with its own unadulterated water supply, plumbing, heat, craft workshop, vegetable and herb garden, even clean environmental power; meshing with nature and the environment while being under the radar of the Centaur herds. She had everything she needed to remain self-sufficient from the rest of the school community. It utilised a great deal of swooping lines, there were no angles to be seen or heard; the interior was both cozy and closeted and yet appeared well-lit and spacious; due to the variable ceilings.

Beneath the Black Lake, Samus toiled to complete a project that many were not in the know about; Albus included...

"Welcome to my secret underwater lair," Aran joked in a nasal voice that the soon-to-be headmaster was quite unfamiliar with as he exited the turbo-lift with a look of astonishment on his aging features. One could quite clearly see through the entire width and breadth of the lake thanks to the Denzium melted dura-glass that made up the logistics and command centre. Although there were multiple monitors and PCs hundreds of years more advanced than anything Humanity would build. The centre-piece was a conference-sized table detailing a live map of the school and grounds. Though the Hunter was as capable of employing sorcery as any non-magical, she more than made up for it in the realms of Herbology, Potions, Arithmancy and Runes, with a little help from Albus when magical forces could not help but be employed.

"You have been busy... I _love_ what you've done with the place," quipped the Warlock, amazed by the alien geometry and whirring devices that put his own collection of gizmos to shame.

"Some things can be put in order in less than a decade. Building a new ship though, even _with_ all the materials I've recovered and shipped to Britain. Without the available infrastructure or my armour it'll take me long into the twenty-first century to finish this great project of mine."

Dumbledore raised the blueprints up to his crooked nose and popped his half-moon spectacles on to take a gander: "it certainly looks complex."

Aran plucked the schematic from his fingers and turned it the right way up.

"Ah! Thank you! I've read some of the works of Wells and Asimov but I never imagined I'd meet a denizen of a far-flung world..."

"I'm only a small part of a greater whole, Albus. Only a small part."

* * *

><p>It was on a snowy winter's evening in late January of 1956 that Aran met <em>him<em>.

She stood in what had once been the office of Armando Dippet, now Albus Dumbledore's, hands at rest, posture at ease, to vet the young prospective Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor. The meeting was late. Green yellow streaks of light touched the horizon for the sun had disappeared and a blizzard began to whip the castle's battlements as night set in.

Exactly upon the appointed time, there was a knock on the door which merited Albus to welcome the visitor inside. It opened to reveal a pale man that Aran immediately didn't trust as far as she could spit. He exuded an air of perfect civility, but apart from reeking of dark magic like corpses in a death chamber; she could see that all aspects of his façade were just that. He wore a 'person' suit. A disguise that couldn't possibly conceal the atrocities that danced behind those disturbing, baby blue eyes; that sometimes pulsed with blood, his pupils were diamonds and aside from classically handsome features - he looked for all intents and purposes. _Wrong_.

He wore his worsening scars of soul experimentation like some sort of twisted badge of pride. Aran was always willing to take things for more than their face value, but magic made decisions of character remarkably simple in this regard. It was there for all those not_ blind_ to see. He was an unabashed megalomaniacal monster. A monster with terrible forces at his command, Aran had often been told she feared nothing alive or dead. That was a damn lie.

She feared just as much as any sentient being, if not more so. It was why she had stayed alive for so long. The secret was - she forged her own fear into will; _pure intent_. The complete and utter destruction of any threat to her and home. This gave her every advantage over men who suppressed their fears, or worse, divorced themselves from such a _weakness _entirely; instead of learning to confront it, to harness it, to turn it into something positive. The steel of benevolent emotion, tempered in the waters of survivalist logic was in its directed purest form - unstoppable.

"Good evening, Tom," Albus welcomed easily from his high-backed chair. "Won't you sit down?"

The _man_ called Tom Riddle didn't even spare the second occupant of the room a glance from where she stood in the shadows atop the balcony, smoking one of her Blue Root cigars placidly.

_"Arrogant ignoramus,"_ Aran mused, pleased at the thought.

"Thank you," Riddle said politely, taking the offered chair across the desk from Dumbledore who immediately stood up to serve his guest some wine. While Albus busied himself with the glasses, Aran studied the interloper further, cataloging... Dumbledore and Riddle exchanged pleasantries but eventually the Hunter decided to join the parley.

"They do not call me 'Tom' anymore," he said. "These days I am known as - "

"_Lord_ - _Voldemort_," the silent up till now warrior spoke with just a hint of menace; causing both men to affix their gazes upwards. "A tad pretentious but considering what I've heard of you, _young Master Riddle_. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The stories of your adventures around the globe are somewhat notorious."

As expected, the man's pale slightly serpentine features twisted momentarily. All too easily believing she was mocking him. But just as quickly, he'd risen from his chair to profess the perfect gentlemen, taking her hand as she descended the stairs and dismounted the lower step.

"You have me at a disadvantage. I don't believe I've had the pleasure, Miss...?"

"Aran. Samus Aran."

"_Charmed_..." he nearly hissed, the warmth in his voice never softening those pitiless eyes of sky, lighter even than Dumbledore's. When he bowed to kiss the back of her hand, Aran half-expected a forked tongue to slide across her knuckles. She barely repressed a shudder. She could feel it now. He was ill. _Sick_ _inside_. His very presence repulsed her and she was _not_ easily nauseated.

"Madame Aran here is the school's new huntswoman, head of security and the primary Keeper of Keys, Tom. I'm afraid you just caught us discussing the latest _collateral measures_ being put into place. I hope you don't - ?"

"No, not at all. The safety of Hogwarts and her students is of _paramount_ importance. _You_ must have received my letters of recommendation, I assume?" Riddle directed his question to Aran as he was corralled back into his chair, while she chose to sit on the edge of the desk, still situated in a higher position of authority.

"I did. They were _glowing_ with praise, with backers such as yours, _any _occupation in the top echelons of government would be yours for the taking."

"Ah, but Tom and I are in some ways kindred spirits. To wizards such as ourselves: forgive me, for _all_ present - there can be nothing more important than passing on ancient skills, helping hone young minds. If I remember correctly, Tom. You once saw the attraction in teaching too."

"I see it still. You must indulge an old student, Dumbledore. I have often wondered why _you _- who is so _often_ called upon to advise on international policy in the ICW and who has,_ twice_, I believe been offered the post of Minister - "

"Three times at the last count, actually," Albus ribbed. "But the Ministry never called to me as a career. Again, something we have in common, I think."

Riddle inclined his head, unsmiling and took another sip of wine. Since Dumbledore refused to breach the ensuing silence that stretched between them now; it was up to Aran to break the ice.

"This _is_ an interview, boy," she mock-yawned, standing to walk over and pet the awakened Fawkes. "Speak your peace."

"I have returned," he said, with some annoyance at Aran's implicit order. "Later, perhaps, than when I'd intended to but I have returned none the less. To request again what Professor Dippet said I was once too young to have. I have come here tonight to ask that you permit me to return to this castle; to teach. I am sure you both must know I have seen and done much since I left this place. I could show and tell your students things they can gain from no other wizard _alive_."

_"I'll bet you could,"_ Aran scoffed inwardly, scratching Fawkes behind the ear.

Dumbledore considered Voldemort over the top of his own goblet for a while before speaking.

"Yes, I certainly _do_ know that you have seen and done much since leaving us. As my colleague here has made clear, rumours of your - _doings_, have reached your old school, Tom. I should be sorry to believe _half_ of them."

Riddle's expression remained impassive as he began to speak but there could be no mistaking the scarlet that pulsed through once white sclera. "Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies. You of all people should know this, Dumbledore."

Aran couldn't let that one go unanswered. "You call it 'greatness', what you have been exploring, do you?"

"Certainly, I have read journals on your own investigations into advanced and obscure Arithmancy, Madame Aran. _We_ are experimenters, and I have _experimented_; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have _ever_ been pushed - "

"Of _some_ kinds of magic," Dumbledore corrected him quietly. "Of others, you remain - forgive me... _w__oefully_ _ignorant_."

For the first time during the meeting, Riddle smiled. Aran wished he hadn't. It was a taut leer, an evil thing. She had to restrain herself from vaulting the desk and doing the entire world a favour.

"The old argument," he said softly. "But nothing I have seen in the world has ever supported your famous pronouncements that _love_ is more powerful than my kind of magic, Headmaster."

Aran wanted to snap that he must have a childishly narrow view of power, but instead the words Albus had once told her came to the forefront. "Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places," she suggested.

Voldemort inclined his head, as if validating her point. "Well, then, what better place to start my fresh researches than here, at Hogwarts? Will you permit me to return? Will you let me share my knowledge and experience with your students? I place myself and my talents at your disposal. I am yours to command."

Aran's brow creased as she exchanged glances with Dumbledore, the elderly wizard only hesitated for a moment before saying strongly: "and what will become of those whom _you_ command? What will happen to those who have dubbed themselves - or so rumour - has it - the Death Eaters?"

Riddle looked less than pleased at this unwelcome news. "My - _friends_. Will carry on without me I am sure."

"I am very glad you _consider_ them to be friends," said Aran brightly. "However, we were both under the impression that they were more in the order of - _servants?_"

"You are mistaken," Voldemort nearly snarled.

But Aran's interrogation didn't abate. "Then if I were to pop down to the Hog's Head this fine eve, I would _not_ find a group of them - Nott, Rosier, Mulciber, Dolohov - awaiting your hopefully triumphant return? Devoted friends _indeed_ to travel this far with you on a night such as this; _merely_ to wish you luck as you _attempt_ to secure a teaching post."

"Such an _omniscient_ perception you possess, Madame Aran. I am _honoured_ to be at the centre of your attentions."

"You'd honour me more by paying me the compliment of rectifying your ways. Pah, like so many wizards, you_ hear_, but you do not _listen_."

Before Voldemort could reply, Dumbledore interjected. "Tom, let us speak openly. Why have you come here tonight, surrounded by henchmen, to request a job we all know you do not want?"

Voldemort looked coldly surprised.

"A job I do not want? On the contrary, Dumbledore, I want it very much."

"Oh, you _want_ to come back to Hogwarts, but you do not want to _teach_ any more than you wanted to when you were eighteen. What is it you are after, Tom? Why not try an _open_ request for once?"

Riddle made a sneer unworthy of his aristocratic heritage. "If neither of you want to give me a job - "

"Of course we don't," said Dumbledore. "And I don't think for a moment you expected us to. Nevertheless, you came here, you asked, you must have had a _purpose_..."

Voldemort stood up sharply, chair sliding back with a harsh grinding sound of wood on stone. "This is your final word?" all his rage was directed at the Headmaster, for whom he had known much longer, completely ignoring Aran's admittedly unnoticeable tensing for a physical confrontation.

"It is," Dumbledore stated, also standing.

"Then we have nothing more to say to each other."

"No, nothing," said Dumbledore, and Aran could not quite believe the notes of unmistakeable sadness and regret infusing Dumbledore's next words. "The time is long gone when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and force you to make repayment for your crimes. But I wish I could, Tom... I wish I could..."

If Aran had been a few millennia younger, she would have jumped immediately to the attack when Riddle's hands twitched for a weapon. As if longing to wrap them around Dumbledore's throat. Instead she crossed the room and opened the office door for him to leave. With a swirl of his sable travelling cloak, Voldemort was walking past her. In that moment fixing her with a look of similar loathing. Aran stared the murderer down, before closing the door on the hem of his cape and spoiling the dramatic exit. There was a sharp ripping sound of costly fabric, followed by low cursing and the rapidly retreating foot-steps down the spiral staircase.

Dumbledore beamed. "You know what you have to do, my friend."

"He'll never see me coming."

Through the halls of Hogwarts, Tom Riddle strode as if he were King of the World. He marched up the main staircase to reach the seventh floor. After several twists and turns he'd entered the East Wing of the castle and halted opposite a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy's attempt to teach trolls ballet. _"The fool,"_ he thought.

Voldemort longed to make this area more worthy of his power and prestige. A monument to the wizard who had discovered the deepest mysteries of this great fortress. With a swish of his yew wand, powerful yet untraceable concealing enchantments were raised along the corridor. Holding onto the antique box beneath his tailored vest, he closed his unsettling eyes and walked back and forth three times, thinking: _"show me what I alone have discovered."_ Over and over, he stopped and raised his bone white eye-lids to reveal...

Nothing.

_"What?! Impossible!" _Riddle tried again, this time murmuring to himself: _"show me the room of hidden things." _Hardly daring to believe that someone else had discovered this secret. When that also failed, he was filled with a mixture of relief and rage. He cast a swathe of powerful Rune revealing charms, repaired those that had faded and transferred a large amount of his magical signature into the stone as if by doing so he could bend the castle to his will.

Upon his third passing, he opened his eyes to jump back in surprise. Aran was standing right in front of him. Mere inches away. How?! He hadn't heard a thing!

"No, no, no," she chastised him gently. "It's the keystone you have to alter and that takes several rare potion fumigation treatments and specialised alchemical equipment to even _reveal_ the correct Arithmantic sequence. Do you understand?"

Tom could not speak for shock, he took another step away from this indescribable woman.

"Of course the limestone inscriptions can only be altered _once_, else you risk catastrophic magical cascade effects. Did you actually _read_ my articles? Let alone understand them?"

Riddle retreated further.

"I didn't think so. Now _leave_. Get out, or I'll _kill_ you."

Tom turned tail and fled. Samus stood still. Then she laughed deep from the belly. That _had_ been easier than expected.

With that, she decided to turn in for the night, in her quarters on the sixth floor. But once she reached the door, her hand stayed from unlocking it. Adrenaline circulated far too strongly for her to even _consider_ settling in with a book and brandy, to meditate or lucid dream the night away. She pocketed her keys - and began to walk.

Her feet carried her towards the entrance hall, from the frosted windows she could see a solitary figure trudging fast through the building snows.

Within minutes she'd reached the darkening high street of Hogsmeade. Easily catching up with Tom, who'd had to wade through the crushed ice while she walked atop it, not slipping once.

Five men exited the pub, stopping cold at the solitary figure atop the drifts who confronted them, back-lit by the formidable castle, colourful dusk and a curtain of heavy snow flakes.

"That's her. She's the one," Riddle hissed to his lackeys. Before, as the leader of the small gang, he stepped forward; not wishing to lose face in front of them.

He approached warily until they were centimetres apart, literally face to face.

The Knights of Walpurgis waited with bated breath...

"_Legilemens_," Voldemort whispered, fixing his eye-line on the windows to the soul. He cackled mirthlessly when his mental attack easily passed into her consciousness. She had no skill in Occluding her thoughts what so ever.

But then everything went wrong. Instead of finding the triggers to invade and control memories, physical and chemical sectors and even subconscious actions. There was just a great blackness, that was slowly lit by stars. Billions. _Trillions_ even.

_"Welcome..." _Aran's voice echoed around and from everywhere at once.

_"What have you done?!"_ Riddle screamed, unwilling to believe he had been outmaneuvered _three times_, let alone once within a single half hour!

_"Me? You entered without permission. But if you'd rather I leave you alone..."_

The invisible ground beneath him fell away and Tom felt himself plummeting through the endless blackness of space; it was the single most terrifying experience of his entire life. To be lost without direction, time, or light save for those disorienting sparks of white.

_"Stop! Stop this! Or you'll suffer!"_

_"You invaded my mind plane. In here I give the commands_. _Here I speak the threats. Here - I am God. And you are nothing." _

_"I will find a way out of here!" _

_"They say you don't dream in cryo. But I've crossed the Universe over a hundred thousand times in my lifetime. It gives you _some_ inkling of the scale. Even if you floated for an eternity you wouldn't escape. And while I continue on your body will be standing in the high-street; until you die of thirst and exposure."_

_"Foolish witch! I am _immortal_!" _

_"Then you _might_ be able to conceive how _long_ you'd stay here for. Unless... _I_ release you."_

_"I'll give you _anything!_"_

_"You merely have to promise me _one_ thing..." _

After a silence that stretched indeterminably long. The two figures shifted. Aran leaned down to growl lowly in Riddle's unblinking waxen mask of a face.

"Stay _out,_ of my territory..."

No more words were spoken. Voldemort flinched involuntarily - and backed down. Saving face by vanishing into a pillar of black smoke that soared far above. His followers apparated away after him.

Aran stood proud. A sensation akin to a strong breeze blowing away the haze of heat permeated her spirit. She spread her arms, left the ground behind and took to the sky as if the world had turned to her design.

Her blood singing.


	2. Son of Man, You Cannot Say, or Guess

**A/N: So much to enjoy writing, I hope you have equal or greater pleasure reading it!  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Son of Man, You Cannot Say, or Guess<strong>

**BY:**_ "How?"_

_"Excuse me? I can't _quite_ make out what you're saying."_

**BY:**_ "How did you _do_ this?" _

_"I explained it before. In this place I'm more _powerful_ than you. In hindsight, I might have been so in _any_ place. It's good to get that finally sorted out between us, don't you think?" _

**BY:**_ "But I - I was always - "_

_"I know you were in so _many_ stories – so feared and so well known. Personally, I never thought much of that 'popularity equals power' nonsense. It's never been tested under controlled conditions. I've tried to stay out of the stories, myself. I prefer anonymity, and my own counsel. And in that one story they simply _won't_ forget. At least they never knew my name. Could have been any old witch in the woods. I was _always_ stronger than you thought. Killed a _dozen_ times, but it never took. Even burned to ashes in my _own oven_, I came back, after a good while. How's _that_ for a frail old biddy, eh? Now you hush and let me finish my knitting. Time to stop struggling and let the deep darkness take you. Your stories are all _done_, Baba Yaga." _

_(Frau Totenkinder) {Fables #27 In Like A Lion - Out On The Lamb}_

* * *

><p><em><em>The Sol System, GSD 4.6 000 000 017 CXV, Planet Gaia, Local Julian Calendar: Saturday, March 7th, 1964 CE <em>_

Only one being knew of the extent that the land encompassing Toirmiscthe Forest harkened on for. A swathe of untamed wilderness of a size that any trapper or opposing naturalist would weep for. A landmass that stretched out into the North Sea but was invisible to the lines of rudimentary cartography and mundane human sight due to the deep saturation of the Power that had led the founders to build their fortress so near the nexus. It contained not only the largest ecosystem of magical creatures in Britain but a vast range of species that had survived in isolation along this few thousand acres of their native isles since the second Ice Age.

Winter was still here, but so was spring and beauty. The crystalline clear waters of the Phendrana river brimmed over the edge of the drop in a smooth, gentle arc, falling in a soughing and frothing cascade among boulders as black as onyx. It broke up on them and vanished in a white foam, from where it spilt into a wide pool that was so transparent that every pebble and every green strand of water-weed swaying in the current, could be seen in the variegated mosaic of the riverbed.

A large dark bull trout attempted to jump the lip of the small waterfall. For a moment it hung in the air, flexing its fins and flicking its tail, before falling heavily into the seething foam.

From out of the pine trees advanced a grizzled old Kodiak bear, who checked for danger as he entered the silver birch clearing leading to the large misting stream.

After a tense few moments, the snuffling mammal cautiously padded through the deep snows to the nearest tree and marked his territory; Spring was fast approaching and with it, his push for greater dominion in both land and progeny. He would kill any cubs he came across, even those he may have fathered... his remarkable nose constantly undulated for threatening scents to his shaggy brown person, even as he made for the overhang to try his luck with the fish.

He sensed nothing.

Not even the bowstring of the one hundred pound torque bow being drawn back just below the ear so that they could taste the salt on the taut sinew and silk woven cord.

When his end came, he was only able to stagger for nearly two metres before keeling over into the crimson soaked slush, the arrow had passed straight through both arteries of his proud thick neck and the beast's primitive mind fuzzed not unpleasantly as his brain was starved of oxygenation; breath coming in panted gasps of mist before he expired with little to no pain, he attempted to stand, convulsed drunkenly and fell, thumping into the drift with finality.

Quick but decidedly not clean, at least not against the pristine whiteness.

The hooded Hunter emerged from her distant hiding place, hooked the set of deflex triple-tipped recurve arms over her back, sunlight glinting off the polished Cyrlic wood and other composite materials such as rune-carved whalebone that betrayed its homemade nature, but it looked far from shoddy work, quite the opposite.

Aran knelt by the cooling kill, then drew a foot of fine oiled steel from her belt, pushing the six hundred pound bulk up further onto its side quite easily. With a swift and practiced movement she slit the belly from sternum to anus, adroitly running the blade around the genitalia, separating the layers of blubber as the skin was peeled back, severing the gullet and pulling the waste entrails out. She also cut open the stomach and gall bladder, searching for the bezoars she'd detected through smell. Though she was immune to their poison-nullifying properties, Witches and Wizards weren't and Horace would appreciate the gesture of free potion ingredients.

She proceeded to efficiently gut, skin, drain and clean the carcass then and there, preferring to get such necessities out of the way than having to dress it back at her own den.

Within thirty seconds she had bundled every useful part of the animal together and slid her Bowie knife back into the horizontal lying Gorog leather sheath at her waist, leaving only a few specks of gore, the poisonous liver and a pile of small and long intestines out for any scavengers. She placed the bundle over her left shoulder and retrieved her multi-barbed arrow from where it had sunk half its shaft into the loam with a twist and a yank. She was not one to believe in anything less than appropriate force for the current threat, the steel tip was a fragmentation head that split into three prongs when entering material; even at two hundred yards and with a half-pull these beauties would impale any fauna no larger than an elk and shred a human target to bits.

Aran soon brought the meat, offal and rolled fur to saddle securely atop her purebred Friesian stallion, Ambrose. He stood twenty seven hands high at the shoulder and she had reared him from a foal with the help of Nicholas Flamel, when she had stayed at his estate in Limousin. The massive charger was aptly named, as good old Nick, sentimental in his old age, had raised the stock with Elixir and it showed in the stud's growth as it would in his longevity; for the strapping lad was already twelve and still getting stronger every day.

She was soon homeward bound to cure the ursine hide and smoke and stew her spoils down to a red iron-rich feast in the larder behind her cottage, for whenever she had guests around, as well as to ensure that her companion was well fed on half a fridge's worth of root vegetables though he of course preferred her to deign him with some Egremont Russets and Ellison's Oranges from her orchards before that as well. The bones she would saw into and grind down to utilise in magic.

The massively built horse nudged her insistently on the shoulder and ear with his sable muzzle, fooling about. Aran, in return, shoved him in play and he pranced around primly until Aran could remove his home-crafted saddle with expert hand-stitching, she needed no bit or reins to guide him.

After grooming Ambrose, the Raging Devil settled down in a plush egg-shell chair for the afternoon, high above in her cabin's warm glass-ceiling sky-loft arboretum. Here she'd planted trees from life-giving worlds encountered on all of her travels and as the woman who had also been known as the Red Death calmly sat back in blissful meditation, breathing hyper-clarifying incense; she watched the Celestial Clock at the cross-beam's centre rotate irregularly, fluctuating through the models of the twenty eight known Galaxies... and she dreamt of those left behind.

Life had become so much... quieter. Aran lived for these moments of tranquility as much as she had lived for war. The moment was all she needed. And one needed the contrast after all, not adherence to a single ideal. Though in some regards, she of course thought her time was always constructive and well spent.

She gardened, collected rare literature, taught numerous lessons at the school as a substitute (along with her own specialties), cataloged magical creatures, built, carved, sculpted, weaved and forged, sought out new tucked away places and magical secrets; even dabbling in certain arts that her own ancestry meant were viable alternatives. Last but not least, she sometimes cooked Michigan Class and Haute cuisine for her friends on the staff.

But that was not to say that peace had made her lose her edge. She had fought for her existence for longer than she had ever reflected in silence during her long life.

Every time it truly bucketed it down. Aran would stand in the glade not too far from home and practice the Art of the World. With switch, chain, sword or whip. She would always stay dry and untouched, deflecting the torrenting raindrops or the swirling snowflakes, even the wind-swept leaves, but her favourite was Spring, when veritable clouds of pollen seeds would wing their way in every direction; and she cut the millimetre wide antigens down into even tinier pieces; such was her dexterity and precision.

For such peace could not last.

* * *

><p>It was mid April.<p>

And Rubeus Hagrid was at a complete loss.

Someone had done a piss-poor job of concealing these tracks as he studied the dusty path. His magically pure boarhound pup sniffing around the area curiously while he squatted over the faint impressions in the spring afternoon.

Even Fang couldn't pick up the scent, if any was there for the sniffing out...

Slightly frustrated, Hagrid picked up his hefty frame and made back for the castle with the long strides atypical of a half-giant; a shame his route home was over a good seven miles away...

It was just past noon when he reached the Hogwarts grounds and immediately made his way at a more hurried pace to the entrance hall, greeting the students that milled around on lunch-time break as he went.

Within seconds of stomping inside, shutting out the general hubbub that the lower years created while in youthful play; he had found the door he was looking for, even though two days ago, it had been located up on the third floor.

It was a plain, nondescript arched egress, save for its great height, but then, he only outstripped his boss by about four feet. A shred really, compared to everyone else.

Upon the upper oak cross panel was a brass name plate which read: 'S. ARAN - SECURITY'.

"Professor Aran, Professor Aran, it's urgen', Professor!" Hagrid burst in with characteristic force, hollering in his distinctive West Country accent and only having to stoop slightly to avoid braining himself on the lintel such was his hurry to enter the office.

The retired soldier of fortune and extra-galactic adventurer was calmly seated behind her cluttered desk, filling out a status report to the headmaster on the runic wards and corner-stone enchantments. It was more for her benefit than his. Albus trusted her implicitly to protect the students within these hallowed halls; and she'd put aside one of her self-made liquid crystal 56k28k monitors to perfect her calligraphy - she'd come a long way from the rudimentary stick drawings she'd drawn for her fathers, when she'd only been thirty eight months old. Today she wore a woad shawl-necked jersey, coal Levi's and exquisitely patterned tan brogues. The Z suit under-layer was the only element of her armour functioning at the moment and its morphing wear-and-tear immune capabilities were as incredible as always.

"You're out of breath, Rubeus. Take your time," she assured him, not looking up as her wrist looped the Phoenix feather quill deftly across the vellum parchment, the twenty fifth sheet of which was rolled out on a writer's tablet, prior pages stacked immaculately beside.

"I - I need to show you somethin'. You'll know better tha' me wha' to do wit' it when we ge' there. And I wouldna' 'ave interrupted ya if I didn' think it was impor'ant. Someone's messin' with our lures, out above the Eas'ern gullies! They were put back sum time this mornin' bu' I _know_ they were moved in a' mean time!"

Aran halted her progress update abruptly upon hearing the news, putting aside her quill, point floating upside-down. She leant her left arm against the arm rest of her leather high-backed chair in the classical philosopher's pose, thumb and forefinger beneath her jaw and lower lip as she stared up at the gamekeeper.

"The Lethifold Sap ones?"

"... Aye."

Aran lowered the same hand that had mused in contemplation to the mahogany table top and clicked the surface thrice with a single digit; considering for only a moment.

"I'll get my affects."

Aran's shoes would shift from in-door to out-door types seamlessly, getting rid of any accumulated muck before traipsing inside. They were now hardy chocolate and tan Salomon Cosmic 4D 2 GTX Hiking Boots from the not too distant future. Within ten seconds they were out of the door as the bell chimed for the end of the lunch period, bringing the students in from the lawns and benches.

"Professor?" a typically brave, and slightly amorous, Gryffindor upper-class-man, called out. "Are you off to slay dragons with that monster?" he pointed to what was harnessed across her back. And Hagrid adopted a wide-eyed look of surprise as if he'd misconstrued the lad's sentence, scaring him stiff before he saw the beaming grin tugging the bristly mess of bracken that covered the entirety of the friendly half-giant's chin.

"Something like that, Micheal. Run along, children. Bella, you look enchanting today, well don't let me keep you, wouldn't want to be late now," she reminded a few dawdlers affectionately and with a wry smile.

"Yes, Madame Aran!" the third year young lady from Slytherin, who Aran had complimented, peeped out of a mixed house group, in a tremulous, nearly reverent tone of voice. Awed at being addressed by the head of the Arithmancy department, who was a role model to the girls as much as Dumbledore was to the boys.

Hagrid chuckled as they walked back across the lawns for Toirmiscthe's tree-line.

"What?" Aran asked, all teasing.

"The kids adore ya," he said gruffly into his beard, Sam could see him reddening with a mixture of abashment and happiness at the admission.

"No more than they do you, Rubeus," she returned with equal gaiety.

"Not 'zactly the same now, is it? Bu' cheers."

They enjoyed a comfortable silence as they took in the beauty of the grounds on their stroll. Grim business could resume once they were actually there.

"I once though' I'd neva be happy 'ere again," Hagrid whispered suddenly.

Aran looked up at his bushy face from where she reached the lower part of the shoulder socket, nodding silently for him to continue.

"Since that damned fire... and ya helpin' me bury Aragog. He was one of me first _real_ friends ya know..." Samus did, this was just the first time he was relating this story while sober. "But I was wrong, things... 'ave never really been better, have they? The forest is free of the more_ unsavoury_ elemen's. Gytrashes, Nandi bears, Dumbledore's much happier only bein' headmaster, more time for all of us too."

The Hunter nodded at his proclamations, although she would never feel guilt for suffocating that - _creature_ and its mate in their lair with woodsmoke and napalming their egg clutch into burning jelly. She had seen first-hand what their kind could do in the Congo and other corners of darkest Africa, how they could devour entire villages in their glut for Human blood and flesh. As soon as she'd arrived back from her journeys and heard about the colony from Ogg, who had finally retired a year ago, the old instincts had just awoken. And she'd _had_ to act.

"... It's a new day. House unity and, wha' do the ICW call it? International – Magical – Cooperation, tha's it. Is at an all time high, none of tha' Pure Blood Supremacy nonsense. Thanks ta those there curriculum changes you headed. How many classes 'ave ya restructured now?"

"Three. Astronomy, Mundane Studies and History. Though I get oversight on new developments in Potions, Runes and Arithmancy as you well know. Albus and I worked hard for those policy transitions. Minister Leech was a fantastic help, of course. Even despite the noble families trying to oust him from office every other month, or worse."

"Wha's wrong with those people? I mean, it's tha 20th Century fa' Pete's sake!"

"They're no different from the Mundanes, Rubeus. Race... culture... blood, heritage. Many believe diversity to be a weakness. We both know that that same unique variety is what makes us strong. Oh, of course they'll claim such dogma is merely for the instance of preserving tradition, or some such nonsense. They don't even have the most basic grasp of genetics to back them up. And their discrimination deeply sickens me."

"Same here. Magic finds its way through tha family lines, Squibs or no. Mug - sorry, Mundanes or no. Why can't everyone just treat others how they'd like to be treated?"

"Because, sadly, then nothing would ever be got underway or accomplished after the fact."

* * *

><p>It was near three o' clock in the afternoon when the duo returned to Hagrid's spot of interest.<p>

"Fang! No! Bad dog! Stop that!" Hagrid urged as the pup clamped his jaws onto the hem of Aran's ornate long coat and began whipping his head from side to side while pulling insistently in a one-sided tug of war, his little paws dug into the ground for traction.

Samus just found it a lark. Though eventually she allowed the bolt of cloth to turn intangible and Fang rolled end over end as he lost his grip on the misted material and tumbled down the hill with a yelp, before bounding up again and running circles around the Hunter, dropping into the 'let's play' stance that all canines still used as throwbacks to their wolfish ancestry.

"He'll calm in time, Rubeus. Don't worry yourself about it. Now, let's see what we have here..."

Aran leisurely slung the combat strap of her scoped Weatherby Mark V rifle, off her broad shoulder and laid it across her knees as she lowered herself at the knees, balanced on the balls of her feet to inspect what she knew at first glance to be a botched path-finding coverup.

She scraped up some of the fine dirt and sniffed it cautiously, recoiling from the rank redolence; faint as it was. But nothing was hidden from her nose.

"Well done, Rubeus. You were right." The Ancient Defender hopped up, resting the maple stock whorl in her right crook as she did so.

"Wha' kind are they?"

"Caingorm Kobolds," Aran announced, "Riddle's people tried to eliminate the scent of their passage with glamours, I'd say they have a leashed pair, bull males, both fifteen footers at least. They've brought them far from their caves."

"I knew sum one was foolin' with us..." Hagrid growled, morose.

"Maybe... with all the trouble of transporting them, they must have a viable plan to get past the Castle's Wards, but how...?"

"Tha's impossible, why, you and Professor Dumbledore 'ave made sure a tha'!"

"Perhaps. But that blazing fanatic has a plan for what I denied him eight years ago... I should have left him to scream in the furthest recesses of my mind. Before sending him into a neutron star."

"He didna' have enough Human left in 'im to die regardless o' what you could 'ave done to him."

"Oh, I have my ways, Rubeus. He is a pitiful sort of evil, so much power with so limited a direction. What a failing. He could almost be a tragic figure, but not a sympathetic one."

"... People are beginnin' to disappear, Professor. On tha continent as well as 'ere on the mainland. Do ya think - ?"

"My responsibility is to the school, Hagrid. And the students within. Those times are over."

Hagrid remained silent.

Aran heard it then, they were being watched from a distance. She touched her temple to indicate to her companion that they were under surveillance and slowly removed several brass cased high velocity bullets from her bandoleer as long as her middle finger. The Mark V was chambered for the .30-378 magnum. Old Roy W himself had gifted her a case of the publicly disallowed military cartridges along with one of the first working prototypes of the blue steeled bolt-action centerfire back in 59', when she'd saved his life with a shooting iron of much lesser quality.

She breeched the rifle, inserted the maximum four rounds one after the other and closed the turn-bolt home with a satisfying metallic click.

"Over there," she said without moving her lips, eyes gesturing to her left.

Hagrid cocked his repeater crossbow carefully as he made to look at the tracks again while casually surveying the glen at the same time.

"I think I see 'im."

The Hunter laughed inwardly at their arrogance as she brought the rifle up, scanning the distant glade. The iron cast mount, based on the anachronistic schematics of a German-made Kahles K 6-24x56 Illum AMR scope, was in actuality a custom-made Foe Glass, with Chozo ground kaleidoscopic lenses, Aran could already see further when sharp-shooting than what any mechanics could reasonably enhance, but this allowed her to look past, and even pierce, protective enchantments, carvings that had a similar effect were engraved into every bullet primer case and rim nose tip that she possessed along with the interior cross-section steel parts of the gun itself; so it could not be transfigured into an overly large courgette or ripped from her hands at a whim.

A disillusionment charm would never work against Aran from close quarters and it didn't save the Death Eater from a distance of four hundred and fifty three metres. For he was too busy sneering at the head of security's Muggle weapon through his mask's own telescopic eye slits to recognise the threat it posed.

Birds took flight from the nearby field as the shot echoed out over the hills.

* * *

><p>"Did you really have to take his life, Samus?" Professor Dumbledore wondered agitatedly, as he paced in front of his desk.<p>

Aran felt for him truly, Albus was simply not a man who could burden the responsibility of extinguishing another creature's soul. But Aran did not believe in its immortality, or the immorality of such an act. Especially when those concerned threatened her charges with their presence - she would restrain from killing them all out in the countryside... but if they dared step into her halls, there would be a reckoning the likes of which they had never dared to dream.

"Yes," she answered frankly.

"Why?"

"To give them a message of my own. They've put a lot of work into making sure we didn't notice their presence until now, Albus. They'll assault us within a week, probably on the night we are plied to with a false message to draw one or both of us away from this stronghold."

"You are _absolutely certain_ of this, my old friend?"

"I trust my instincts. Riddle wants blood, he'll get it. But not from anyone _belonging_ in these walls."

Dumbledore stopped wearing a hole in the floor and stopped to peer intensely at Aran and Hagrid, hands tucked into his aquamarine and silver sleeves.

"But... this is good..." he mused to himself. "Tom will reveal our own weaknesses..."

"Exactly, and we will be able to patch them up in retaliation."

"Tom must have another agenda..."

"He did the first time, this stands to be no different."

"Are there precautions you can take? To taking them in alive?"

"Riddle is insane, not dead. He won't be stupid enough to send people against me that could relay information back to us under pressure. More likely they'll be catatonically Imperiused vagabonds scraped up from Knockturn and given a crash course in the Dark Arts. Their aim will be to kill or kidnap teachers and students, sow terror, gain unwilling sacrifices for his rituals, but that will only be the immediately apparent objective. We will keep track of them all. And not one will live to threaten us again."

"Samus..."

"This is the job, Albus. You may not like it, but this_ is_ the job. I have to do this _my_ way."

"... And I am going to let you, but please, Samus. Think of the children."

"I do."

* * *

><p>That very night, Aran was entertaining herself with a light patrol of the corridors, though thanks to one of the many 'Slug Club' parties that Horace threw occurring this very night. The Hunter had been escorting students back to their houses well after the all-inclusive curfew that Aran not only demanded, but actively enforced except for special occasions like Yule Balls and other treats for the students.<p>

"Good evening, Professor," a Hufflepuff prefect entreated as her work came to a close.

"Morning would be more fitting, Mr. Diggory."

Amos smiled winningly at the school huntswoman and gentlemanly asked if he could accompany her back to her apartments as thanks for ensuring the other members of Slughorn's little soirees returned to their houses. After hours it was usually their duty, but Aran was being extra vigilant and had decided to allow the upper years their bit of extra fun while she stretched her legs after hours and hours of paperwork.

"That is very gallant of you, Mr. Diggory. It would be my pleasure, and it is a good time too, I wouldn't wish to make any of the other ladies vying for your company jealous..."

The handsome young man was sputtering something incomprehensible as he offered her his arm and Aran accepted it as they strolled down only two quiet halls and around a corner together, before Aran's office reappeared for her on a landing leading out to the spiral staircase.

"Don't think I'll be letting you run off to the kitchens alone now. I have to check on the perimeter."

"From within your office, Ma'am?"

"Yes, yes, it won't take but a flick of an Etecoon's antennae."

Amos opened his mouth to say something but snapped his jaw shut a second later, thinking better of it.

The door swung open easily at Aran's presence and she immediately brought up the large golden-chrome holo-state image of the castle, grounds, and about fifty kilometres in every direction that rested on her war table. Such auto-updating cartography had taken her years to program. She was still working on a way to transfer the real time schematics to her omni tool whenever she wished. Without her suit's incredible hardware and no materials to spare for creating the tools necessary to build such a complex piece of machinery; Aran had to rely on magical Arithmancy configurations, Rune info-grams and her body's own incredible electrical capacity to power up the adaptive maps. While her visor could display the same schematics, only her office's main terminal could track whoever was within the walls, disguised or no.

While Aran busied herself in checking the blind spots where she hadn't placed cameras, Amos gazed around at the bizzare gubbins and interesting paraphernalia around her office.

There was a large painting of a jungle with alien geometries, a Muggle rifle hanging from a coat stand where the famous Witching Cloak hung also. A massive cabinet that took up one of the many walls, a rack of medieval weapons took up another, stacked with several blades including a Scottish claymore that resembled the Wallace Sword.

Tapestries and artifacts galore stood out all around.

But the Pièce de résistance was the huge Tome that was given pride of place on an ornate reading stand. It was bound with a curious pale brown leather that Diggory did not recognise, and he had been allowed a supervised visit into the Restricted Section. If he didn't know better, he would have to say it looked suspiciously like human skin... and the spine decorated in shrunken bones. A strange multifaceted Rune was carved into the marking sheaf's stone clasp.

"Where did you find this, Professor?"

"The book?" she inquired without even glancing back. "Years ago. I had some rather interesting encounters in Angkor Thom and it found its way into my hands."

"Where?"

"Cambodia."

"Ah..."

"Hmph!" Aran laughed at his knowing reply, but decided to spare Amos further embarrassment by inquiring what continent that country was located in.

"Don't touch it though, but that goes without saying. I've had to be very careful at extracting its hidden Magicks. Its invocations are remarkably similar to the Chi spells used by ancient Taoists. Except it's much less... _f__orgiving_ if the practitioner makes a mistake. It costs more than joint pain and your muscles and nerves rebelling. There are much higher costs. To the body. To the soul."

"How do you know if you haven't suffered any effects?"

"It had other users throughout history. They weren't quite as lucky."

Amos gulped as he looked once more at the foreboding grimoire. It was then he noticed the complicated astrolabe contraptions monitoring it, not to mention the voices he could just discern, whispers at the edge of hearing... and beyond.

He stepped towards it.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," the huntswoman announced, breaking into his dark thoughts. Aran turned back to Amos with a smile that quickly faded as the youth trembled; his gaze still fixed on the Tome. It was calling...

"Amos!" Aran snapped.

The Hufflepuff prefect seemed to jump nearly a foot in the air, looking at her wildly.

"... You need a stiff drink," she all but ordered. "That thing's harmonics are truly off the scale, and even with all my precautions... and Horace just plies you with thimbles of cherry liqueur at those underplayed ceilidhs, doesn't he?"

"Professor - I - this is a _school_!"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Mr. Diggory. You'll get a nip of something in a hot drink not the whole damn bottle. I won't take no for an answer."

Amos tried to comport himself and regain his bearing, it helped that Aran was using her Psionics to block the Tome's mental suggestions from further influencing the boy. It was reaching out to others. That was new, that was interesting...

"Then by all means, Professor Aran. Let us retire to the kitchens."

* * *

><p>"Good late morning to you, Mistress!" the head House Elf, Rufiopy, chirped happily up at Aran. He and four others were working the graveyard shift.<p>

The Hunter couldn't help but be amused at the sight. Every other female teacher or faculty member was addressed as 'madam', 'miss' or 'missus'. While the students were 'young miss' or 'young master'. She was the only one to be singled out as the Elves' 'Mistress' while Albus got the grand title of 'Master'. Every other male adult had to contend with a simple 'sir'. It tickled her pink to imagine that the slightly less diminutive cousins of Brownies saw her and Dumbledore as the power couple that ran in the school. And even though they weren't married, they all but did!

"And to you. A bottle of the 1847 Satureja and bitter Orange, please. And a Butterbeer for the boy, but hold the extra sugar."

"Right away, Mistress!"

"Wait a tick! We _never_ have Butterbeer, Professor!" the fifth year protested, surprise evident.

"Correction. You poor sods don't. We responsible adults have our own still hidden away here though. Away from you young rascals!"

"Outrageous!" Amos mock-huffed.

The two of them, teacher and student, sat across from one another at one of the many smaller counters while Rufiopy levitated a tray over with their drinks.

"Thank you," Aran acknowledged the middle-aged Elf kindly as he set the beverages down with the utmost care.

"It is my pleasure, Mistress Aran." He did a small hop-skip and a dance as he walked back to supervise the mopping up; after bowing low to the undisputed protector of the castle of course.

Aran uncorked the Elven distilled gin and added one dash to Diggory's Butterbeer, before downing a measured sip from the bottle herself. Amos took a gulp of his frothy glass tankard and relished the extra warmth to the cockles of his heart, along with the unusual aftertaste.

"I shouldn't have let you in there with me," she said after a moment of silence. "I apologise, Diggory."

"There's no need, Professor. I'm sure whatever enchantments you had raised would have stopped me from doing anything foolish."

"Ah, well that's the problem, isn't it? One flaw with any protective wards, no matter how small, among a veritable_ super complex_ of woven spells can be exploited. Every permutation has to be considered. Every outlandish discrepancy from within as well as from without. If the - intelligence residing in the Tome had compelled you to open it, my wards wouldn't have triggered. Thankfully, the monitors I have set up will record those signatures it transmitted and within a few hours I can draw up a counter-measure to inscribe into the relays."

Amos warmed his hands on his beer-stein. "Professor Thornberry has us simply decoding incantations, and that's hard enough. Do the applications for Arithmancy and Runes really stretch so far?"

"More than you can possibly imagine. It's a hybrid programming language. There have been many terrible accidents throughout the ages among dabblers who didn't conduct their experiments with the utmost diligence. I'll have it moved to a separate chamber in my quarters."

"... How many of those kinds of artifacts did you discover before you started at Hogwarts?"

"Oh, all kinds of odds and ends. There are dark places in the world, where few to none dare tread, ancient nexuses of power, of knowledge..."

"I think I prefer my Care of Magical Creatures to trekking across the world, there's enough variety here to keep anyone busy!"

"True, exploring is not for everybody, but sometimes – "

Aran stopped abruptly, perking up. Alert.

"Professor? What is it?"

"Shh," the Hunter held up one finger to silence him. She turned to face the exit portrait and scrutinised it. After three seconds she spoke in a tone that brooked no argument. "Whatever you do, don't leave this room. The Elves will protect you."

"But I'm a prefe – "

She gave him a glacial look.

"I'll guard the kitchens, then."

Aran rolled her eyes inwardly at the erroneous self qualification and quickly exited through the portrait hole of a bowel of fruit, while Diggory was drawn to one of the small windows that was situated along the sinks. It was beginning to rain... not just rain, but pour it down in sheeting buckets, a vast white mist headed across the lake in a foreboding fog-head front. Then lightning struck.

There was a blast of intense cobalt light and a whoosh of wind as a portkey deposited a man in full Death Eater regalia right behind the boy. His ugly mouth-grated silver mask and Celtic Rune adorned all-black battle robes marking him as one of the Dark Lord's Chosen, willingly or otherwise.

The reflected flash off the brass cook pots and the unmistakeable sound caused Amos to spin around. But even as the Knight of Walpurgis raised his wand to stun the teen, his arm was roughly pinioned from behind, forcing the wand tip away and his throat constricted with his assailant's left. Aran had returned in less than the blink of an eye.

"You picked the wrong school, bud!" she snarled in his ear, even as her iron fingers crunched the delicate cartilage in his throat to rubbery pieces, preventing him from performing an incantation.

But the conditioning Voldemort had imbued his agents with made them far from average Witches and Wizards. The gurgling man shadow-shifted, trying to buck Aran off as they collided around the room, his wand blasting out different coloured jets of light every half second, sending Amos and the House Elves for cover as utensils, food-stuffs and their two drinks were propelled across the room to smash against a wall, explode into splinters of ceramic and metal or went up in flames.

Samus cursed at being made a fool of by a near-helpless foe and promptly broke his wrist in mid-flight, causing him to drop his wand, this also ended the unique form of combat Apparition, they both scrambled up but Aran made it before he was onto his second foot. She kicked out his knee, clasped his chin and the base of his skull from the front in both her mighty hands and turned his head nearly clean upside down; letting him fall to splash into a puddle of spilled milk that had been upturned in the struggle, it quickly veined pink.

"Oh my god! You killed him!" Amos gasped at the brutality.

"And what do you think would have happened to you if he'd managed to take you to _him_?"

Diggory immediately looked contrite, but understandably nauseous.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Despair. Soundtrack choice: ****C21 FX - _Blood Red Roses_ ********______– ______****Christopher P. Bragg**

* * *

><p>She flipped the Death Eater over with a flick of her foot and he arced back to his feet on invisible strings and burst at the seams.<p>

His guts, skeleton, flesh and skin split like a gourd, filling the kitchens with the rank acrid smell of fecal matter, which quickly faded as everything with the slightest capacity for condensation frosted over from an intense and unnatural cold and the torches were extinguished to dull red coals in their bracket braziers. The Elves could do nothing but flee into their little tunnel dwellings in the face of such malignant black sorcery.

The retired bounty hunter was too enthralled by the sheer demented genius of the modified bone-thief Curse to take action, before the tall, shadow cloaked, grey rotting monster pulled itself free from its human glove puppet in a cascade of crimson. Its terrible inhaling breath filled the massive room with its menace, seeming to make it contract and shrink around the pair. Diggory was screaming blue murder as he took cover behind the counter, his tears turning to icicles that caused his cheeks to remain stretched and distorted in his crying gasps; incapable of closing his mouth even if he wanted to.

A blurred blow took the catatonic Aran across the face, laying her philtrum and nares open and knocking her flying into a bar stool that tumbled over with a crash. Then it was upon her, the sheer feeling of helplessness overwhelming her spirit as she desperately tried to restrain its thrashing, black scabby leprous hands.

Her mental defences were a tatters, and through the rushing of water as it felt when you desperately tried to reach the surface before your lungs burst; Samus Aran relived nothing but the worst memories of the entirety of her long life.

_Mother's face, among the mashed heads of many disappeared between the dragon's jaws, eye popping free from her socket. An explosion lit the horizon, her father's ashes fell to stick on her blood bathed skull. Her body was melting under a spectrum beam of death, poison and parasites tried to carve her up from the inside out.  
><em>

Its long, filthy clawed nails pushed in close, raking four deep furrows across her other cheek, eye-socket and brow as it closed its hand slowly but surely, the wounds bubbled with dark magic.

_Another mentor died for her, friends were tortured or turned, she was trapped for mere hours in that lab, that place, dissected, impaled, flayed, breaking free in an orgy of death and despair, killing indiscriminately such was her fury. Those rare moments of hopelessness were all she had left now._

The _thing_ forced her back against and over the counter with hideous strength. A nightmare chill sapping all the warmth from her marrow as it bore its weight, both physical and intangible down on her. For all the world looking as if it was about to take her as its own.

_"They brought me there. Tortured me. Tore up my mind. I have to get away! I'm running! I can run faster than anyone... running in a dream. But my legs are lead and my ankles are putty. Something's behind me. Moving with me! A half life. A crippled life. An unending life. ___–___ It's on my heels. If I slow down it will get me! I'll suffocate in it __–__ in its darkness! And I won't be able to scream, or yell, or fight it off... because it will be inside of me!"_

It was an indestructible non-being. An amortal afreet from the blackest hell, as ancient and cruel as the Djinns that ruled the Old World.

_"It's in my blood and it wants to get out! Crawling under my skin... it's grabbing at me. Snatching at my veins like _ropes – tendons like wires, fingers pulling back through my ribs, sloughing off my bones, when they're not cracking or bending back. I'm sinking to the endless abyss. Pitching waves running into the night, it's in my lungs, the liquid, slowing me down. I can't get away!" __

The particular fell breed that was spitting and gnashing at Aran's gritted mouth with its own sucker, needle-filled maw, while she pushed back against its flailing skeletal hands was known as a Vordak. Its fell power distorted existence around the centre of her being, drawing her warmth, her existence and trying to unravel her immortal soul to lap up into its fiendish cavity.

_"FREE! FREE!_ _FREE! __Nothing can hold me! I'm running like a truck, a barreling truck, right uphill. But the load is full. And that thing is breathing down my neck. It's gaining while I'm losing ground! But I must run! RUN FOREVER! FIGHT FOREVER! _NEVER GIVE IN!_ Out of the pitch black it comes for me... the alien. The animal. The reason I live. It's everywhere. It's everything. _Don't give up. _Can't go on _____– _____knees giving in _____–_____ gristle shot. _Don't give up! _Every second is blood and fire. Bones heavy. DENSE LIKE LEAD. SHOT. THROUGH. LIKE. STEEL. IN _____–_____ THE _____–_____ HEART _____–_____ CAVING IN! _DON'T GIVE UP! _CAVING IN... UNDER THE WEIGHT... THE WEIGHT OF..."_

_"THE DRAGON." _

Vordaks. A powerful Covern entity of several Assyrian Dementors, this was not one of the puny weakling wraiths that hailed from the icy wastes of Greenland - those that the Dark Lord Ekrizdis had roped and begat as easily as a herd of wild horses and which were only ever a true threat to Wizards or Mundanes alike in great hordes. No, unlike the 'tamed' Azkaban guards, who were stoic enough to only enjoy consuming excess happiness for prolonged periods of time, Vordaks only had one goal in their fevered excuses for sentient minds; the consumption of souls for the master who had summoned them.

It was a demon.

But Samus was the Devil.

* * *

><p><strong><em>AN: _Resurgence. Soundtrack choice_: With Every Passing Day _______– ______ Jason Creer**

* * *

><p><em>"No. NO! He never overcame me! Mother fell before me! Phaaze went to oblivion around me! The Ing didn't stop me! The X didn't stop me! THE REAPERS DIDN'T STOP ME! I. AM. ZAH-MUS. WARRIOR! PROTECTOR! THIS ONE INCUBUS WILL NOT STAND BEFORE ME AND LIVE! KILL IT, GIRL!"<br>_

She was the only Lord of the Earth that was worthy of worship and this hell-spawn had royally pissed her off.

The hoarfrost began to evaporate in wisps of steam, the torches were reignited, her wounds purged the filth, creased in on themselves and sealed shut without a mark to betray their previous existence.

Aran was screaming through her rows of clenched teeth as the Vordak's arms and eyeless head were shoved inexorably away, clarity re-coalescing, existence itself stopped twisting and deforming...

Then the talons came out.

Two sets of four, twelve inch hooked raptor blades of golden hued dull Denzium steel alloy burst from her omni tool's invisible housings. The immaculately honed knives could cut through Wurtzite Boron Nitride polycrystalline super-abrasive structures like a regular diamond saw would vaporize anything else in its path. The rare alloy was also anathema to wraiths as much as iron was to the fey folk.

The Greater Dementor howled in abject horror as its meal was cut off, but Aran's rumbling growl tore over the ungodly sounds as she bodily cast it away with every iota of her renewed strength, slamming the near-immortal up against a nearby fridge.

Her unceasing bellow of victory drowned out the Vordak's hellish death screams as she plunged her eight dagger-tipped fists through its chest. They were face to face as she squeezed off the movement in its arms by flexing her metacarpals inward, she absorbed its hate and disdain for all life, reflected it, channeled it back into its ghastly mockery of a humanoid's features as it gnashed and sobbed in the realisation that it was caught in the grip of something more terrible than itself; before ripping them free.

Aran's deafening cry ended as abruptly as it began, the Vordak lignified in milliseconds and collapsed into a pile of crumbling ash, leaving a blight against the red clay Pugin tiles. The Hunter was inhaling and exhaling heavily but in even spaces, spittle hung from a corner of her mouth and her eyes were slightly crazed with battle lust.

She turned mechanically on the spot to see a still weeping Amos peeking over the table top, knuckles white as they gripped the edge.

"You all right?" she murmured, voice hoarse.

His quivering head jerked in an approximation of a yes.

"Stay here. There's more of them... Rufiopy!" she called and the Elf materialised in a wisp of smoke. "Shrink him down and keep him in your chambers. Give him something for shock. This is far from over."

Aran grabbed the portkey talisman from the Death Eater's remains and phased through several metres of brick, entering the long darkened corridor that led round to the Hufflepuff common room.

Four more Death Eaters, their lit wand tips raised, had their backs to her.

Her Shard Visor activated and the world became a vision of fractures and shatter-points, the disposable Knights all contained a Vordak within their shifting stained-glass windows, streaks of oily shadow besmirching the warm and cold frosted panes.

The two at the front had passed around the corner. The other two waited behind as a rearguard. She walked up behind the first, popped her right hand's blades and stabbed him through the base of the skull while yanking his forehead back with her left.

Even with the added precaution of telekinetic auditory filters blocking the excess noise, the erratic shift of light on the wall from his sputtering Lumos spell dying caused his companion to turn. Aran slipped the knives into his vitals as she walked passed and didn't stop even as he fell.

While she had left Diggory the first time, she had scouted out the opposition as fast as she'd been able without revealing herself to them. There were at least two dozen Imperiused Wizards mocked up as Death Eaters, four of them corralling two Mountain Trolls between them. Aran bemoaned the fact that she hadn't thought to commit to mandatory deep scans. Her edge needed honing.

She'd also activated the silent alarm in her office, to rouse her friends and colleagues from their beds as well as lock-down the student dormitories with additional enchantments. But then she remembered the true power of the Imperius Curse, how it could endow as well as control. If Tom was half as smart as he liked to think... they could enter the children's rooms.

That was not going to happen.

Aran checked the corner and reached out with her perceptions, marking every intruder she could detect, even those under disillusionment spells. Why hadn't her warning charms activated? Helga's barrel hidden entrance had been opened and the two Death Eaters were exiting the door, one carried an unconscious little girl, clad only in her nightie, bridal style. Aran saw red. But unlike before, it was a measured, refined veil of red.

Those bewitched by the Unforgivable Curse of Control could not feel pain when under its heady influence. They could not even be scared out of their wits, precluding the use of psychological warfare and scare tactics. But they could be startled and they held or lacked as much initiative as dependent upon the creativity of the caster.

Considering _his_ power, it was amazing they actually paused for an instance in surprise and shock as Aran charged down the hallway, claws extended, pumping at her sides like the pistons of a locomotive, voice rising to an incredible base of roaring objection.

The one to her left dropped the prepubescent as if she were a sack of flour, fumbling for his tool and weapon in one. Aran vociferated louder than ever as she closed.

The other pointed his wand at her rocketing form and shrieked: "Crucio!" the power behind the Curse caused a flash of red sparks to flash from its tip as the invisible force rocketed outwards.

It struck Aran in the right shoulder.

She didn't lose her stride.

The next moment, his arm and wand were flying away in pieces, in a shower of blood and sparks, quickly followed by his severed head departing from his body in four perfectly bisected chunks.

"Avada - " the other half managed, before Aran cleaved his skull in half with her newly transitioned left vambrace, mask and cranium smacking into the walls in opposite directions, along with a massive dollop of the red stuff splattering the high arches, with accompanying brain matter.

The Hunter stood triumphant once more above the rapidly leaking bodies of her foes, they bled smokey grey shadow as well as maroon ichors... a lingering jolt of foreign pain in her transverse humeral surprised her, it seemed she was not as immune to magic as she liked to think... resistant, yes, but total immunity...? She would certainly not stand in the path of the dreaded Killing Curse to find out the extent of her upper limits.

Still, it hadn't impeded her. She gently scooped the first year up in her arms before the growing pools reached her curly brown hair and carried the poor darling to her office and laid her on a conjured divan. Aran also pocketed the Tome within one of the many hidden voluminous undetectable extension charmed pockets of her magnificent Witching Cloak, shucked the intricately embroidered jade and olive great coat on and then threw her hidden armoury open with a wave of her hand.

Firearms stretched from floor to ceiling, both past and present models and those that would be unfamiliar to any other gun collector that lived.

She quickly equipped herself with two sidearms, one she clipped into a horizontal magnetic strip sheath on the small of the back and the other in a bottomless ankle holster under her jean cuff. Then she selected her main weapon, something that could fell a Ukrainian Ironbelly with the proper application of violence and slipped that into the weightless unhindered confines of her robe as well; before sealing her command centre behind her and vanishing the entrance.

Three Death Eaters were marching down the third floor's Charms corridor when the Hunter materialised behind them courtesy of the Come and Go Room. She detached and hurled two of her Denzium blades into the backs of their heads and choked the third to death telekinetically.

After stealth-killing her way through another half dozen, she quickly reached the rendevouz point next to the statue of the hump-backed crone. Aran had long since sealed the secret passage to Hogsmeade hidden there but it would not take long for the other members of staff to join her...

"Who goes there?" a stern female voice issued from the clock-tower passage.

"It's me, Minerva," the hybrid answered. Then, realising she'd need more than that. "They're not yet gone. But we're still free," she called out to her old friend and colleague and after half a heart-beat's pause; she emerged.

The now thirty year old Minnie McGonagall looked as old as the Hunter and just as combat ready, her black hair was askew from her sleeping braid and she was wearing a tartan dressing gown over her night dress and Argyle slippers but her eyes were abright and she seemed to have been in an altercation, blood running from a gash in her arm.

"I hope you drew first blood, my little one?"

"Yes, three of them are incapacitated upstairs but I was slow... I see you have not been idle either," she gestured at Aran's bloodied weapons.

"Mister Diggory and Miss Sutler are safe. The students are all being guarded?" Aran asked, sheathing them before healing Minerva's wound in a second by placing her own hand over it.

"Thank you, Sam. We repelled them from Ravenclaw and Gryffindor Tower and have patched up the Hufflepuff Den. But none of them have gone near the Slytherin's Dungeon."

"Curious... it is fortunate you have aimed to stop them and not to dispatch. I have marked those of which can be killed without triggering the release of a Vordak. It should show up for you as well."

Minerva paled. "He would _dare?_ To bring such creatures into the – you _fought_ one?!"

"I vanquished one. And exorcised others."

The Scotswoman had to visibly collect herself. "Well... Albus is down in the catacombs with Pomona, Derk, Poppy, Filius and Évariste; they took some of the children and drew him into battle there."

"Sweet Mary..."

"Indeed. There must be at least fifty of them all together! But with you up here... tonight might be ours after all."

"Tonight will not be our end, Minerva. But it _will_ be theirs."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Aran dusts off her oldest skills. Soundtrack choice: _Broken Dreams_ ______– ______Shaman's Harvest.**

* * *

><p>The pair stopped by the balcony overlooking the study areas before the spiral staircase.<p>

"I count ten," Aran whispered.

"How shall we take them?"

"You tie up the two which are possessed, I'll take care of the others."

"Are you sure?"

"Without nary a doubt."

Aran leapt over the railing and performed a death from above stomp to the nearest clavicle. This flowed into a Wushu jumping spiral kick which snapped the neck of another.

By then, the Death Eaters were returning fire, most of it bright green. Samus rolled into cover behind a lectern while three were incapacitated by their waist-coats suddenly Transfiguring into strait-jackets and tangling up two others.

The Hunter drew her modified all-steel Belgian M1878 Nagant revolver from behind her back, used her omni tool's nano foundry to mold one of her sets of spines into seven Denzium .45 gas seal bullets, she loaded it in a trance, closed the loading gate and jumped sideways through the air, firing bolts of lightning from her right hand and pulling the trigger with her left.

One went down with his mask melting through his face, the next with a 11.5mm round hitting him in the eye, the last one's heart was stopped by the white indigo-edged projectile when it struck him in the chest and subsequently set his companions on fire.

It wasn't fair or honourable as Aran cocked and gunned another down by shooting him in the top of the cranium as he doubled over and pulled the second Knight into the path of a hurtling Killing Curse, before dealing with the last by blasting all four claws into his chest and throat then pulling them back into place with a micro-thought.

The gun had used her own pestle and mortar ground smokeless Cordite powder, this coupled with its unique operation caused every shot to emit the echoing sound of a pound of slate striking on slate after being dropped from a hundred feet into a deep canyon, rather than the Hollywood blasting roar everyone usually expected before they'd ever seen or heard a real gun fired in person.

McGonagall descended to behold the carnage.

"Heavens... what did we do?"

"What was necessary."

Aran and McGonagall reached the lower landing of the main staircase, but not before Minerva used an expert steps to slide Transfiguration spell to send four more Imperiused shock troops slipping off the swiveling staircase to their doom a half dozen floors below, as Aran had summoned their wands away.

"Who goes there?! Professors? Oh, thank goodness!"

Their Head Boy, Ravenclaw's star pupil Bartemius Crouch, was leading several awakened students of all ages, judging by the degree they were sweating and panting, they had been chased half-way across the castle.

"They're behind us!"

"We have this, Barty."

"I can help you!"

"Help _them_," Aran commanded.

The Hunter heard McGonagall telling the band of students to barricade themselves in the kitchens as she walked past and let her gun settle into her right hand as she deployed the three-spined vambrace on her left with a beautiful 'SNIKT'.

Seven Death Eaters rushed around the corner.

"Morning!" Aran greeted brightly. Then she raised her pistol and blew the nearest one's lungs clean out of his chest. Followed by a 'T' cross-section special typical of paramilitary forces veterans.

The noise was enough to make the pupils who hadn't yet fled do so.

"Back to back!" the Hunter ordered.

McGonagall was a redoubtable ally, fending off those who were slick enough to shadow shift away from Aran and attack the brunette instead. She used whips of fire, shifting stone and jets of water and gusts of compressed air against their Dark Curses; felling three.

Aran was slightly more pedestrian.

She ripped one's leg right out of his buttocks by stomping on his foot while flip kicking him with her free foot and revolving back in the same motion; a physical impossibility for anyone that wasn't Chozo. Another she killed by scooping his leg out with a backhand sweep fist then hammer striking him with the same hand so hard in the pelvis as his groin soared up to meet her that she split his spine. She made sure the next was truly dead by doing what anyone should do to a mad dog savaging you, it reminded her somewhat of snapping a wishbone after Thanksgiving.

Number three had his entire body pulled free from his third vertebrae, number four was put down with a knife hand spearing him through his heart and out of his back. The last two, and any still living, were shot twice in the head where they lay after Minerva had stunned them.

"Samus!" McGonagall admonished in outrage. "They were our prisoners!"

"And now they are not, Minerva. They were blank slates, minds wiped and reprogrammed by Riddle to kidnap children under_ our care_ for use in perverse occult rituals and to murder us in our sleep at the first opportunity open to them. We will not show leniency to such a tactic. So do not mistake caution for cruelty. We must stamp them out wherever we find them; to dissuade the enemy otherwise."

"I don't approve of your methods."

"Your approval is not requisite. _I_ am in charge of the protection of this school."

"And a fine job you're doing at the moment, what with the enemy within our walls!" the Scotswoman fired back. Aran wouldn't lower herself to dignify that rejoinder with an equally biting and unassailable rebuke, turning away to deal with the next wave.

Her brutal efficiency undiminished, Aran rushed her next victim, spear pitched him onto his back with a ram to his breastbone, straddling him. The blow left him clutching his cracked sternum while Aran exposed the hollow of his throat by leaning his head back forcibly and snapped her fist thrice into the soft flesh and major artery, pulping it underneath the force of her attack.

Two more were killed with biotic vectors and a siphon reave. The last present, she seized by the front of his robes and his hair through his hood and rammed the side of his skull into a pillar several times until the stone gave way and she was left with a sticky chalk mess and a crumpled mask.

Then twenty confronted them.

"Where do they keep _coming_ from?!" Minerva cried.

"From all the seedy streets of all the cities in all the world. The disenfranchised! The impoverished!" Aran yelled back as they took cover.

They peppered her column with all manner of Dark Hexes. But then they brought out the big guns.

"_Deletrius_!"

"_Reducto Maxima_!"

"_Confringo_!"

"_Lacarnum Inflamarae_!"

The Hunter's side of the corridor was reduced to rubble as the detonations ripped through the stone. Minerva was barely able to shield herself from the shrapnel in time.

Death Eater's continued to hurl jets of green light where they were sure Aran had fallen, sending up plumes of rubble and fire through the stone dust smoke.

Five of them promptly fell dead in retaliation, two with smoking holes through vital organs and three clutching at spouting arterial spray or scrabbling at their mortal head wounds as the last-minute firing synapses stuttered out, not to mention the foot long lengths of star metal embedded in others. One cut off his fingers as he gripped the ever-sharp edges and whined piteously as he died.

She was clinging to the vaulted ceiling arches above and had rained death on them before deciding to join them personally.

One of her own brands of magic flared, blue nimbus aurora engulfed her irises, but without an accompanying Mass Effect eezo engine to harmonise the fields, the subsequent emanations were all but completely invisible.

It still left Minerva slack-jawed when she saw the fifteen men floating helpless in mid-air. Aran flexed her mind and eight of them went to atoms, the seven furthest just managing to survive the repulse wave intact while being blown into the walls; gravely injured or crippled.

Aran didn't bother to dump the cartridges of her Nagant, opting for a New York reload by drawing her second piece from her ankle holster. A Fegyver Es Gepgyar PJK-9HP, a Hungarian clone of the famous Belgian Browning Hi-Power. This particular model retained a checkered grip, ventilation ribs, a ring hammer, beer-sights and a two-tone nickel steel brown carbon fiber finish._  
><em>

Her masterful trigger control had them all writhing on the floor a second later, Aran opened the loading gate of her Nagant, performed a reverse rail-road spin of the revolver's frame and blasted the cartridges through their masks by spinning the cylinder with her thumb while using a micro-push of biotics to turn the thin Denzium shells into veritable miniature rail gun coils without the use of any actual juice.

"Look out!" Minerva warned.

They had stepped up their game. Aran and McGonagall smelt them before they saw them.

Lightning flashed through the windows and illuminated the heavy muscle Riddle had seen fit to smuggle into the castle.

Two bull Mountain Trolls definitely complicated matters. They were immune to all but the most powerful spells.

Luckily, Aran had the perfect cure for this stinky affliction.

She drew forth what she'd chosen from her munitions cabinet. The small-arms cannon billowed easily out of her robes' endless inner pocket, while her pistols floated at her side once she'd released her grips on them.

Her centrepiece for tackling large dangerous Magical Creatures of the mega fauna variety was a Holland & Holland Double Rifle 'Big Bore' Nitro Express, chambered for the .700 calibre, the one thousand grain cartridges she'd hand machine-ground were replete with pure copper Minié ball soft heads and Tamisier grooves. It possessed enough sheer swaging and obturation PSI to kill an Orca or even a Blue Wale if directed at the right essential organ.

The gun itself was a masterpiece. It had a 29 inch barrel, a standard front sight with combined moon protector, a fixed rear-sight regulated at 100 yards with a folding leaf sight regulated at 200 yards, a reinforced sidelock ejector, double triggers with accompanying front articulated trigger and classic pistol grip cap box. The stock was made of deluxe quality walnut wood, while all the metal-work plating was of a case colour hardened finish, unique deep stippled Acanthus leaf scroll pattern engravings were set against this tailor-ordered 'Rose and Scroll' burnish; along with the butt end metal shoulder protector panel as well.

Aran unlocked the gargantuan weapon, slid the moon clip home with two side-by-side 164 gram bullets, hurled it away and closed the barrels up with a snap.

Then she saw the hostage the Death Eaters holding the Troll's chained leashes were carrying.

A favourite student of hers. Molly Prewett.

"Minerva! Cover me!"

The Raging Devil rushed them with her double rifle outstretched in one hand. The recoil was enough to blast any unprepared Human individual over, but there was no muzzle flash when the massive round sent one of the Trolls toppling over backwards to turn his handlers into pudding. Aran made sure to protect the ears in the vicinity that mattered with her biotics.

The second's club came up and over but Aran power slid between his knobbly squat legs, revolving on the slick tiles, she shot the second Caingorm over her shoulder and sent the entirety of its tiny brain and upper part of its skull splattering over the rafters.

Flipping both the rifle and herself from the floor, she just managed to dodge two streams of sickly green death during both pirouettes, before ending the final two with a similarly placed head-shot with her drawn semi-automatic just before she rose and a lightning fast Mozambique Drill for the last.

Both Trolls and men hit the ground before her Holland & Holland's stock fell neatly into the crook of her arm, even as she replaced her flash-forged magazines and piped another round from her omni tool.

"Well..." Minerva finally breathed again after witnessing the display. "A fat lot of good I was there," she said grimly as Aran scanned the corridor with the monster of a weapon she was reloading with her mind and picked the crying Molly up under her legs and cradled her above her hip, to which the girl immediately wrapped her thin arms around Aran's broad shoulders and her legs around her delineated torso and sobbed into her collar.

"Nonsense. My warning made them focus upon you for the split-second I needed. And – son of a..."

More, _always_ more.

"Damn Riddle to the seventh circle!" Aran spat as she ran with McGonagall towards the Entrance Hall, having to keep pace was irksome, but she was not willing to fight with a child in her custody and had to reload her rifle with her telekinesis as they sprinted away from the mass of jeering zealots.

Finally, they ran into some more teachers.

"Take her!" Aran told Professor Sprout, she turned, allowed her rifle to stick in place to a high corner of the ceiling with her biotics and pulled her double-action.

Before her allies could even raise their wands, Aran floored their enemies with a pulsating corridor-clearing shock-wave thrown from her empty right palm.

Even as she leveled the reloaded gem of an automatic pistol at their scrambling forms, a recognisable male shout came from behind.

"_Bombarda Totalus_!"

"Proctor! No!" the Hunter warned.

Their Defence against the Dark Arts Professor, Simon Proctor, was a brilliant man. But he'd erred fatally.

His powerful wide-spread Gouging Curse brought a good deal of the marble roof down on top of the invader's heads. But the primary reason Aran had fled besides the child's safety, was because they had all been harbouring a Vordak in their souls. And she had been gathering the spent Denzium casings and ricocheted rounds with her power over matter, leaving her unable to kill them efficiently until now.

Sure enough, even as their colleagues rejoiced in jubilation, Aran and Minerva watched with mounting apprehension as the air went to ice and over twenty of the Greater Dementors crawled from the debris. Then there was no more rejoicing.

"BACK! BACK I SAY!" Aran roared at them and backpedal they did against the Dementi as the Hunter switched out her copper coated bullet magazine for one with reformed Denzium rounds plucked from where they lay or had embedded themselves. She only ever carried two magazines because of this.

She rapid-fired all eleven rounds, catching the cartridges with her biotics and blasted their ranks with them too. Only half of them fell.

"COME ON!" she challenged.

They swarmed over her like the tide, Aran had summoned and re-molded her Denzium claws back to her as fast as she could, but it was too late for such paltry measures.

"GET – _OFF_ – OF – ME!" the Raging Devil roared, struggling in the grips of twelve lesser sons of Hell. Strength turning to ice water as she wrestled with them.

"For God's sake, help her!" Minerva screamed at her fellows. "She'll be kissed! Patronuses! All together now!"

"Expecto Patronum!" they announced as one.

Multiple Corporeal and intangibles flew forward and for a moment, the emblematic representations of human hope and happiness, riding on silver mist knocked the Vordaks back.

Then they were sucked up into their foul orifices.

Riddle's brilliance reared its ugly head once more, he'd overcome, through depraved experiments, a Dementor's primary weakness. The Vordaks didn't need to sense their food's despair to overcome and absorb it regardless, but neither did their prospective victim.

Aran's hands glowed with so much Neutrino energy that her bones shone clear through the skin, even they were translucent. She managed to reduce several of the Vordak's to dust as she stole their life force away, taking in the radiance of the souls they had devoured and sustaining her struggle.

But she was tiring, even her incredible fortitude was taxed by the combined and multiplied affect of their already enhanced and uncanny powers. And as she buckled, curled up into a ball and shielded her mouth, the eight or so temporarily foiled Vordaks decided to engage in a lesser-known but just as viable aspect of their feeding habits and began to simply rip her apart.

"_EXPECTO PATRONUM!_"

The brilliant twin lights threw the snarling Vordaks clear off Aran's tattered, bleeding form.

Samus rolled over to see who her saviour was. Even though she knew through a bloody grin who the most likely suspect was.

Dumbledore was marching down the corridor as if he were on the war-path, duel-wielding his original Pear wand he'd purchased from Diagon Alley circa' 1892 in his left and of course, the Elder wand itself in his right; that he had defeated the Dark Lord Grindelwald himself to obtain.

Both silver gold Phoenixes. In and of themselves epitome's of the_ true_ Patronus, melted the Dementor's presence away, such was Albus' power in the emotion he was summoning and even reduced several of the more greedy to burnt out husks as his joy and cares caused them to disappear into the Ether as they feasted themselves into oblivion. The son of Percival and Kendra was not the greatest Wizard of the age by dint of his academic skills alone.

For a moment, Aran thought they had won.

Then her HUD went haywire as it warned her that every remaining infiltrator had flat-lined, having either slit their own throat or allowed their soul to be taken by their erstwhile comrades.

Which meant...

They were coming.

A hundred descended down the main tower, above and below and even Dumbledore had to ready himself to cast again in the face of such odds. Both Patronuses dimming against a tide of true fell evil. A speck of light against the black.

"Gather around! Around me!" Dumbledore projected with the still-not-lost voice of the orator.

They did so, Aran reached them last, gaining in speed all the while; she had produced a strange jagged stone from one of her Witching Cloak's many hidden pockets. Its fissures glowed with both pure white and rainbow light at the same time, but as the hurricane of Vordaks were about to reach wand range, she brought it up to her chin in both hands and breathed upon it, causing its inner effulgence to pulsate on every exhale. She had done so once every day since she had recovered her memories.

"Cast in three! One! Two! Th –"

Aran whispered in a tongue no human could replicate.

"_Through vigilance and strength. We create peace._"

She punched skyward and a wandering white sun burst into being from her clenched fist.

The dome of Aetherian Core Light Energy expanded to protect the entire Faculty. The Dementor's broke against it, many dying, their advance halted.

Gobsmacked as they were, when Aran commanded them to cast their Patronus' upon the strange crystal she held; Dumbledore was the first to contribute.

"That's it! It's as fully charged as it will be! Now close your eyes!"

"What?!"

"Why?!"

"We're not - " multiple voices questioned, though the Greater Dementors scratched at the shield and Albus had already obeyed without question.

"_Close_ your _eyes_."

They did so. And Aran bolstered additional telekinetic protection. Even as their protective bubble began to fade, she reached inside her own chest with a phased arm and pulled free seven sparks of matter-antimatter from the Energy Transfer Unit her old friends had gifted to her several lifetimes ago. The wisps of creation joined with the Light Crystal as well.

The Hunter reared back her arm, put as much of her own strength into it as she dared and clapped it into her hands in one motion as if in prayer.

The home-made annihilation field detonation, infused with both the Darkness of the Sixth Dimension and the World-sustaining power of an alien world; along with a dash of pure positive emotion: it killed every dark creature in the immediate vicinity, scorched the walls black and burst many an old portrait to flaming ash.

* * *

><p>"Alright! Everyone! Where are you, you miserable curs?! What's with all this damn smoke? We showed those blood traitors if this is the state they're in! I can't see a damn thing! Dilungo!"<p>

Some of the smog lifted, but not near enough. Tiberius Dolohov had Portkeyed onto the first landing of the spiral staircase, long after the initial assault. He was there to meet with what he knew would be at least some of his master's puppets and their prizes. The old fool and his flock couldn't possibly defend against the entirety of the forces his master had arrayed against them.

His easy smile, hidden by his Death Mask and accompanying relaxed posture disappeared at once when the fog rose and vanished in a strong gust of telekinetic wind and when he saw what lay ahead of him.

Albus Dumbledore and Samus Aran stood barely three metres away from him, with the staff at their backs; all of them were relatively unharmed.

For just a moment there was a silent stand-off. Then Dolohov went for his medallion portkey.

Aran tore it from around his neck without even a single gesture. A twitch of her eye-lid was enough. Horrified, he opted next for his wand, only for Dumbledore to promptly strike the offending appendage with a non-verbal flicking flash of red light and relieve him of his weapon.

"No! Get away! I'm unarmed!" he cried, putting his hands up in supplication as the Hunter stalked forward menacingly.

First, Aran backhand slapped his mask clean off, revealing the gaunt terrified features underneath. A snap punch to the liver followed, axe-poling him on the spot but Aran propped Voldemort's Inner Circle Member up by his lapels.

Her pankration straight kick took him right in the solar plexus, hurling him down the stairs four at a time to land on the Entrance Hall's landing; much the worse for wear after such a short but impactful trip.

"Get up! Get the _fuck_ up!" Aran hissed, seizing his hood and half lifting, half dragging the Death Eater to the lowest step. "A Death _Eater_, that _is_ what they call you, is it not? Well let's see you eat some death now, _murderer_. Open your mouth and bite the stone!"

"SAMUS!" Dumbledore thundered, upon seeing such an act about to be committed in front of him.

"Not _now_, Albus! Every second he draws breath is a second more that he can use to carry out what he came here to do. Riddle entrusted you with something didn't he, Dolohov! Something _more_ than ensuring the transfer of hostages!"

"The Ministry will take him into custody! See what he knows!" the Headmaster insisted.

The Raging Devil scoffed at that, she saw his side, flawed and nonsensical as it was. Riddle would not allow any of his servants to compromise him. But more importantly, her blood _demanded_ he die. They were still in danger and she trusted her instincts after a thousand thousand struggles between life and death.

She knocked several of his teeth loose jamming him in place, while the Staff protested in horror and indignation. Aran wanted to scream at their bleating hypocrisy. These men had come into their home and tried to subject them to fates much worse than what she was about to do to this bigot.

* * *

><p><em>"Now let us see if you can palate this," she deadpanned to her victim, before executing him with a single stomp.<em>

_There were screams of disbelief and disgust at the grisly result of her actions. Aran did not care, in her eyes, at least she did something, dammit._

_She looked up to see numerous cast ropes that Albus had conjured to stop her, but he hadn't been able to restrain her. Magically created items were about as useful against her as low-level magic itself. Especially when going up against a Dark Energy manipulation barrier._

* * *

><p>After the fact, Aran wished she had done this. It would have made the whole night much easier, but one pleading look from Albus had undone her, damn the man. And she had acceded to his request. After all, even she couldn't determine every outcome, her only condition was that he scan the Knight's mind with his rare gift of Legilemency.<p>

"Why did you come here?" Dumbledore demanded of the Death Eater.

Dolohov was able to resist for all of two seconds before Albus tore aside his formidable but limited defences.

"... To... to kill... _her_."

His face twisted momentously as several magical code-words activated. Aran just managed to dive in and knock Dumbledore aside as the Death Eater's entire body was perforated to such an extent that most of his features exploded in tendrils of darkness. Riddle's ace-in-the-hole expanded from Dolohov's meaty shell, reducing him to so many scraps of pink mist.

The Bogeyman itself.

Aran had heard rumours of the Screaming Bogey of Strathtully. A Boggart of near immeasurable power and gluttonous size. Lyall Lupin had managed to trap the elephantine black shadow in a matchbox two years ago; in a Ministry Operation that had claimed the lives of fourteen members of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures before they'd managed to contain it. The Ministry called that debacle the Strathtully Slaughter.

The immense Bogle was rapidly gorging itself on the combined fear of the castle's inhabitants; it was expanding, gaining in strength. Glowing white narrowed eyes staring out malevolently from its swirling depths, at the tiny mortal meals before it.

Dumbledore regained his feet and flicked the branch of Elder.

"_Continent Obscuritas_!" he bellowed.

The Bogle was compressed inward momentarily but it rapidly fought off even the Headmaster's incredibly potent Counter Curse. Its amorphous girth pulsating outwards, almost flexing the magical granite stone blocks out of their mortared places.

Aran added to Dumbledore's efforts by summoning a wide singularity into being, although incapable of forcing the creature into the Dark Dimension like her armaments would have been capable of doing, it did help box in the monstrosity but it was an uphill battle even for two as formidable as they were.

"Hold him down for just a bit longer, Albus! I'll bind the creature to another plane!" Aran roared over the noise of hurricane winds in a closed corridor. She knelt, one hand aloft to help with her dark energy restraint while her other palm settled into the dust and drew forth a lode of the Power from the castle's very earth.

_"Redgormor Narokath Bankorok Aretak," _she heard the corpse God impart from the nether, (or was it her own voice?) as her omni tool's laser focus suite projected invisible software guided scalpels which carved the glowing indigo runes of a Nine-Point Circle of Magicks around the behemoth. There was a rush of air and a vortex of violet light whipped up to entrap it, taking all of the pressure off Dumbledore as he slumped, ashen-faced against the wall, his reserves almost completely depleted from resisting a creature of pure magic for so long.

Luckily for him, his counter-part and protector had prepared for such an extraordinarily dangerous containment.

Her omni tool activated a scripted Conjuring Charm, which brought out the repaired Vanishing Cabinet from the Room of Requirement, right beneath her target in a flash of cerulean light. The Magick Seal forced the Boggart down to size and into the dark confines and Aran leapt forward to slam the wardrobe's door home and activate its gear lock mechanisms before rushing around it; tracing Arithmantic rune grids over the ebony wood with her palm. They blazed with gold light as they took effect and they grew brighter still as the occupant put all its considerable effort into breaking free; shaking it on its spindly diamond spaced legs.

The Hunter braced the doors with every fiber of her own remarkable strength, while the Staff watched in mounting apprehension. Aran gestured brusquely at the Headmaster while her back strained against the rattling, smouldering doors and he readily complied, running up to her.

"Take this lodestone," she told him, handing him the relic from her greatcoat. "I recovered three from the old Celtic Hallstatt sites. In place of your core, use one drop of your blood on the glyph and it will revitalise the key markers under the school where they broke in. You'll need to put all of this fortress' magic into defending the foundations and the living quarters from any form of attack; physical or otherwise."

"What is in there, Samus?"

"Something beyond _any_ of your ability to combat. This battle is _mine_ alone. Begone! At my calculations, he'll batter through the limbo barrier within two minutes. And he'd wipe Knockturn off the map if I close the link. Then the rest of London. And after that no force on Earth could oppose him."

"What _is_ it?"

"The first and the last enemy to be defeated. All of you _must_ go. He's tuned in to _me_ now and me _alone_. He'll be made tangible by my nightmares. He's something I _can_ kill, unlike before... Jesus! How did Tom manage to harness so much of the Power?! The reports never mentioned the Bogle was_ this_ strong when Lupin trapped it."

"I was wondering about that too... he must have conducted sacrificial rituals at the North and Southern poles..."

"One at the close of the Summer Solstice and the other at Winter Equinox, of course..."

"Those disappearances, so many children... heavens above..."

"Nothing further from it. Though neither exist save for what we make for ourselves. The man _is_ insane, but by my forebears he's a_ genius_ as well. Just our luck."

"Samus..."

"Go! Damn you! He's coming..."

Her friends and colleagues raced down the corridor, looking back many times at their head of security as the Boggart began to splinter the door she held closed, smoke and fire seeping out of the cracking, lengthening interstices.

Upon them all withdrawing to safety, Aran flung herself back, while at the same time, the brother of the last remaining Vanishing Cabinet pair in Britain was ruptured into a thousand pieces.

And once again, through the billowing red smoke and hellish brimstone; her raison d'etre lived; standing before her as vast and terrible as he'd been that day everything ended and everything began.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Lord Ridley is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch of course! I finally got around to watching part three of The Hobbit. Safe to say, the first ten minutes were the best part of the film.  
><strong>

* * *

><p>The Neos Vovonian life-form crouched at a formidable thirty feet tall in the vaulted corridor, unable to reach his full height. He had always been... <em>too big<em> compared to his kin that Aran had hounded through the dark corners of the Universe. For he had glutted himself on the loot and flesh of a thousand worlds and slept coiled at the hearts of suns drained dry. Steam glistened off midnight hide. The same shade it had been when she'd first laid eyes on him. In another age, another time. Eyes of pitiless orange flame burned in his sockets, alight with malicious cunning and delightful cruelty, the long diamond shaped snout dipped finely at the end, giving him the almost noble mien of a classical ancient dragon, if not for the fact that the corners of his huge narrow mouth were hitched in a ghastly smile, glistening grey teeth larger and sharper than any of Earth predator's, past or present, glistened through the solitary gap of his twitching lip. The gums royal purple, clear saliva dripping in a thin strand from said same corner.

His breathing was utterly silent. Like the Raging Devil, he was a creature of sheer effortlessness.

_"Hello, _little girl_..."_ he whispered an avalanche from somewhere within his mighty chest, though his mouth did not move an inch to betray him.

"Hello, mother fucker," Aran replied, arms crossed high under her collarbone. She had never bothered to refer to him by the name his minions had foisted him with. Primal terrors had no need for family titles. He was a_ thing_, not a being. A force more presence to her magnificent mind than flesh; their physical confrontations had always been secondary to the spiritual peregrination.

The Draconian fiend's long death mask quivered ever so slightly before her. He was drawing in all the newly fresh sensations of smell and electroreception that were his to command once more, his anticipation and excitement mounting as he determined the lack of three shining beacons in his nemesis' body; overflowing with information control. But the power was still there... curious... the situation had never been more different from their past encounters. Aran felt a horrible roiling sensation in her breast.

It was pure terror, spreading through all her limbs and screaming for her to run and hide. To flee and survive. But she did not quail and she did not back down. She merely gazed up at him, her eyes intense yet serene. And then that bubbling swamp of despair became a healing river, a flowing source that was both within her and beyond her.

The air between them thickened, pulsing, building.

Ridley licked his blackish, barbed, wolven tongue over his armoured snout. It sounded like a giant's hand smoothing an equally large piece of parchment.

_"This time you are going to lose..."_ the monster gloated, eyes of hell-fire gleaming.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage One. Act I. Frenzy. Soundtrack choice: _C21 FX - Ancient Evil_ ******______– ______**Cody Still**

* * *

><p>Aran saw the move in his eyes before even he did.<p>

Claws sharp enough to rend the outer hull of a battleship flashed forth, one pair following the other in quick succession.

Biotics allowed Aran to parry them both. A dancer and a behemoth made mince-meat of their surroundings as the former was pushed back by the ungodly variety, angles and amount of attacks heading her way.

The Hunter spiral back-flipped through the thicket of death and vector looped with her biotics, changing her direction to swing up and around Ridley's jaws which had snapped at her in mid-air, mounting his nostrils.

A bolt of lightning issued from her open palm, right at his left ocular socket, but all three sets of his eye-lids closed in reflex from the jet of effulgence, blasting the attack away in a shower of sparks though the pain caused him to buck and send her flying up higher, to grab the Gothic arch cross-rib beams above.

He punched upwards, Aran pirouetted aside and his obsidian forearm sunk through into the second floor, pulling down tonnes of stone as he withdrew, forcing Aran to dance to the third beam down. His second attempt was a palm strike and his thumb caught Aran's leg as she dodged, pinning her to the ceiling.

Ridley cackled manically and mashed his hated enemy once, twice, thrice against the roof. Aran repaid him as he prepared for a forth slam by seizing hold of the beam and tearing the twenty tonne length of stone free, and down, increasing the piece of masonry's mass tenfold and smashing him across the hollow of his throat and clavicle with the incredible thrust, causing him to grunt in pain as it imploded into him and release her.

Aran rained dark energy warp wreathed blows down on him along the same amount as the multitudes of granite chips that showered amongst their forms. Until Ridley pressed her into the wall with his sheer girth. The shoulder barge stole her breath, then the Dragon used his mostly folded solar wing to scrape her along the corridor at sixty miles an hour.

The trip ended when he saw fit to drive her head first into the opposite wall like a toddler having a tantrum, breaking his toys. Aran braced with her arms, foiling him as the curtain battlement crumbled like sandstone, he tried again, the sole of her foot saved her from the second impact, hissing, the animal spun and threw her forty feet down the adjacent hall.

Aran slid on her back, expertly dragging her momentum down and slowing her flight with another plyometric kick against the floor, slamming into the T-section of the lower cloisters with a hefty 'oomph!' laying her out on her back, stunned.

The dragon reared back for a second, as if about to sneeze, what issued forth instead was a veritable machine-gun stream torrent of plasma orbs that raced towards her, blackening the hall with carbon even as it came.

Aran telekinetically projected herself along to the side like a dart, a picture perfect biotic blink. The explosion of plasma hurtled after her once it impacted, filling both corridors as the heat expanded. Her Witching Cloak and her biotics would keep her safe from the convection and the material itself but Aran was not willing to expend so much energy on taking a hit she could avoid instead.

Her flight took her back to the main staircase and she rolled aside to avoid the after-flow of molten matter, summoned her double rifle from its upper corner resting place and readied it, checking both passages.

Nails, no, claws scraped deliberately along, echoing shrilly. Aran tracked both entrances and whispered another Nine Point Circle incantation, slowly this time.

_"Little girl... little girl. Don't lie to me... tell me where... did you sleep, last night...?"_ he crooned mockingly.

The firing mechanism flickered with pale violet witch fire for a second, before fading, the enchantment was complete.

_"That actually hurt, little girl,"_ he projected, the voice sounded down both avenues. _"You've gotten stronger... but on this pitiful world... SO AM I!"_

Out of her peripheral vision he exploded through the architecture in ambush, barreling towards her, but he was wily, not daring to expose the softer parts in his mouth, the nervous centre and chemical glands by trying to roast her where she stood. Not when she was armed.

Aran turned on her foot and fired with both hands holding the weapon. The massive slug bounced off of the back of Ridley's pointed crest and he screeched in agony as his head was flung back momentarily. The Hunter cursed, his hide was nigh impregnable.

Her second shot, aiming for his eyes once more, was knocked aside by his barbed tail, a one hundred foot coil of bone, sinew and pure perfectly evolved muscle for steering through nebulae clouds and solar prominences. The reverse cut would have sliced her in half had Aran not pulled off one of her famous contortions. A row of unlucky surviving portraits squealed as their homes were turned to dust from the force and speed of the blow.

But by then he was already beside her. He plucked the gun from her hands, or at least tried, as Aran held on, relentless. She struck him with bolts of energy as he swung her about, but they were as the bites of mosquitoes compared to the amperes she had been capable of channeling on Zebes, with the Varia suit at her fingers. One attack from the Terra-watt level wave beam had crippled him then and there. These merely angered the monster.

Aran was smashed into the walls and floor until her head rang with the vibrations and the second shot had been similarly wasted in mid-flight, the shot staggering his arm back to stop him from gutting her but not piercing the adamantine skin that covered fear itself.

Ridley flung the empty Elephant gun aside as he loomed over her, lying in one of the many craters he'd caused.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage One. Act II. Cruelty. Soundtrack choice: _C21 FX - Perception _********______– ______**** Christopher P. Bragg **

* * *

><p><em>"Now... that's quietened you down a bit, little girl."<em> He reached down calmly and pincered both of her arms between what passed for thumb and forefinger, lifting her high in a crucifix hold. He began to pull in opposite directions. _"Your dear daddy seared the flesh off my bones, crushed me beneath my own damn flagship on that_ sty _you pigs huddled in! You reduced me to a living corpse on Zebes! Smote my ruin upon the mountainsides of Tallon IV! Drove me to the depths of the earth on Norion! Then I all went to pieces on Urtraghus and _again _when I took your precious prize from those walking bags of blood! ... You crushed, perforated, boiled and drowned me under Norfair... but you'll _never_ be rid of me!"_

"You say that... as if your continuing existence... is an aspect I'd like to deny..." Aran gasped as her muscles quaked, resisting but faltering more and more against the immense opposite forces enacting on her astonishing frame. He was so blasted strong... so strong... "You couldn't be ****______–______**** further... from the truth of all things."

He snapped forward, aiming to bite her head clean off. Aran flipped her legs up and just managed to trap his jaws open. If she failed now, she would be a quadruple amputee.

"Let... me... go... or ****______– ______****I'll do something you'll regret..." She was barely holding on, her shoulders about to be torn loose from their sockets, her calves, thighs and spine screaming. ****______  
><em>_____****

Ridley merely chuckled and began to summon a plasma lance up from the blistering bellows of his throat.

"You asked for it, beast... observe."

There was a flash of mint light from four points, neutrino siphoning fields that stole all the tension from Ridley's perverse embrace. The harmonics staggered him but did not lignify or rot his flesh, at least not all over. For on his right hand, Aran had seized the index finger with both hands and put all of her unique ability into the stranglehold on that same digit.

With a flash and a sizzle, it came clean off in a smooth ring of necrotic crumbling, formerly invincible flesh and she fell neatly to the ground and landed on both feet with pantherish grace and her prize.

_"Impossible! What _are_ you?!"_ he shrieked, flailing back, gazing in numb horror at his now maimed and rapidly wasting hand.

"Something more."

With a flourish she hurled the departed talon straight through his left eye and saw it protrude from the top of his nose in a spray of neon ichors.

_"DAMN YOU!"_ Ridley cursed, half blind and foaming with incandescent livid white hot madness.

Aran kept him off balance with more jets of electricity at his fresh wound, then slid in underneath him where his bulk gave her the advantage. Ridley went ballistic, tearing the furnishings apart in his effort to repay her for the mutilation ****______–______**** but his size worked against him, at least until he'd cleared enough surroundings to mount a full three hundred and sixty degree spin.

The Devil leapt over the Dragon's tail and caught some of the kinetic energy as it passed underneath. He released a point-blank solar flare shedding from his beautiful hexagonal patterned wing membrane. She absorbed it with a combination of her Magicks, her Witching Cloak's intricate sewn Runes and her two powers over matter. Ridley split the lensman fissure on the back of his untouched hand and put half a yellow star's plasma radiance into it as he backhanded his old enemy. Aran saw the flow, diverted, subsumed, re-channeled and released it back against him in a mesmerising display that matched the atomic motion of a molecule higher than any on the Periodic Table in its complexity of animation; forged into a final back hand fist of her own.

Every bit of the combined force sent Ridley ploughing through seven walls and out into the rain and night.

Aran was yanked with him as he looped his tail around her waist.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage One. Act III. Magnanimity. Soundtrack choice: **_**Vulcan **_********______– ______**********James Pagget**

* * *

><p>Hunter and prey fell together, one a glowing blue shooting star of brilliance pressed to the breast of the black one as they fell into the ravine, uncaring of the ferocity of the elements and reveling in nothing but the need to destroy one another.<p>

Ridley kicked his opposite up and off him as they plummeted, rolling, unfurled his massive wings, trying to take flight. Aran caught him around the throat with a biotic lash composed of liquid lightning and dragged him back, swung up to his face and punched his injury inwards rapidly driving the impromptu stake deeper with every blow; screaming he thrust back his head, she collided with the speeding rocks but managed to tether him to the edge and yank back as she rolled, negated the slack he'd temporarily created, dug her feet into the solid rock, in yet another astonishing exemplar of fluidity, grace and strength.

His huge throat nearly tore asunder, but the solar flares from his wings flattened her in response. Ridley writhed, flung his foe against the side of the crevice and displaying his own remarkable flexibility for a creature his size, managed to turn and bathe Aran in a pure jet of plasma that melted most of the mountain face inwards, but weakened the resulting overhang.

With an incredible cry that bespoke of all the nameless history between these two immortal enemies, Aran, with no heed to restraint, on fire, energy waning as her protections tapped her stamina, twisted her hips back as far as was allowed, stood as best as she could upon a river of lava and drove forward to smite the red hot stone above with both hands clasped together.

Adults and children screamed or covered their ears in both the castle and her closest town as the reverberations shook through their bones while sending every loose item not nailed down crashing about.

Four thousand metric tonnes of granite broke off the landscape in a Richter event and crumbled over to inhume them both.

She could hear his voice even as she grinned through charred lips. An echoing thunderclap, magnifying in volume, booming yet muffled over the quake; croaking, like amplified premature burial.

_"Arrraaaaaaaaaaaaan!"_

He bellowed to the deep as they were covered in the mountain slide, dragged down into the black. The rumbles of the Earth coinciding with the thunder of the Heavens.

Now it was her turn to laugh.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage Two. Act I. Perspicacity. Soundtrack choice: ****_Rising Force (feat. Tina Guo) _**********______–______****** ****R. Armando Morabito**

* * *

><p>She slid down and over the edge. Clung to the barest lip by the blister covered fingertips of one hand as he disappeared below, unlike her, he could not form any kind of protective barrier while in a planet's atmosphere.<p>

With several biotic blinks, she ascended up the fortifications, needing to catch her breath after such fierce bouts. And settled on the central tower.

Then she remembered. The bastard had minor morphing abilities of his own, he could shrink and compress his form somewhat to a more reasonable fourteen feet!

Lightning illuminated the gargoyle ramparts and through the driving precipitation, every statute could have been him. For he could disguise his skin better than any octopus or chameleon as well...

Almost recovered, Aran stealthily made her way down the gallery, trying to control her breathing which now came in blasts of steamy mist.

She snapped her vision back and forth to every set of empty eyes, more than one had a weathered left or right orb. He'd defaced some of them...

A flash of light again, did several move? Or just one?

She pushed the soaking wet strands of hair out of her eyes, swept it back in the barest display of anxiety.

There it was, a screech of bone on a blackboard.

She pivoted and removed the dragon's head with a hammer blow and a roar of triumph, it came apart in basalt pieces.

Aran whirled.

Nothing but the night and the rain and the dull-eyed grotesques.

"COME ON OUT AND _FIGHT!_" she called over the driving rain and the wind.

Pathetic. She would do the same if she could; fighting smart was not fighting cowardly. But she was afraid. So afraid... all it would take was one...

The Hunter heard it at the very last second and reacted, but she still cried out for the first time as the whispered venomous barb jutted through her shoulder from behind, then pulled back, slamming her into the diagonal roof in a shower of tiles. She blunted his second claw attack as he loomed out of the dark, but he yanked her up once more by her injury and nutted her into the beams. He tried for the plasma breath once more, but Aran hit him with everything she had from both effulgent palms, right in the epiglottis, then cauterised her stab wound as she brace pulled herself off of the end of his tail.

She levitated every piece of debris around her with a wave of her fist then spread all digits and accelerated them to a fraction of light speed but the beast blocked the expanding hurricane of shrapnel with his wing, brightening the wondrous material at every impact point to an opaque brilliant impregnability before they returned to the same dusky bronze transparent membrane.

Ridley impaled her through the stomach in retaliation and subjected her to another short flight drag up the steeple. Aran siphon tore his thumb off on his favoured offensive hand and sliced the closest thing to his Interosseous artery open in return, spraying glowing orange blood in place of her crimson.

_"YOU LITTLE CUNT!"_ he wailed as she healed and released electro-magnetic warp resonance gigawatt hammers at him.

They exchanged fire, both coming off the worse, until Ridley clapped both wings together and sent out a shock-wave blast of such intensity that it caused Aran to unbalance through the semi-circular blast of superheated rain that echoed out for well over a mile. And he seized her in his jaws as the torrent resumed.

Aran was able to stop him from eating her with another siphon drain, weakening him further and wrenching his mouth wide even as her wound closed entirely. Ridley spat her clean from the spire.

_"I don't remember you having _their_ power... but you're still just a little bird without feathers, who can't even fly!"_ he jeered at her falling form. Ready to end this farce by maintaining his air superiority, so he could cook her from where he was safe.

"My fathers, my _family_. _Were_ – _not_ – _birds_." The Devil floated on the wind before him as she rose to his eye-level, long coat billowing around her. "And who says they couldn't fly?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage Two. Act II.** **Versatility. Soundtrack choice: _Ascendance_ **********______– ______Audiomachine______  
><em>_____********

* * *

><p>Aran charged through the down-pouring sky with both fists outstretched, Ridley rocketed forth through the rain and they collided with a mach 3 explosion that would have torn the towers from their resting places had it not been for the centuries of magical strength residing in its walls.<p>

_"Those people you care so much for, Aran! I'm going to take them from you! One by one! And where are your friends now! They abandoned you after a few scuffles and some rocked foundations. That's how much the safety you provided was worth."_

Blue and orange light blazed off each other as they tore into the sky, the great black dragon under the moon, his wings of gold carrying them higher as they fought.

_"And when the dawn comes. When that building lies in ruins, the elderly put to the sword and the children within devoured and I turn my gaze to the world beyond... the legend of the Red Death will be worth nothing at all..."_

Ice particles coated them as they shot up into the atmosphere, borealis brought into being by the immense confluence of energies crackling against one another.

The Devil poured lightning down his throat, the Dragon wrapped his wings around her and scourged the flesh from her back; causing her to cry out an alien name and redouble her twelve-point simultaneous strikes into chain volleys that began to crack and sunder even his iron bones.

But he could heal fast as well.

Ridley blazed forth another jet of plasma orbs that ignited the hydrogen around them even as crystal flows swam around them from Aran's involuntary psychokinesis. She swam through the stream of creation and staggered her nemesis with three alternating power swings to the chops.

"FUH! KING! _DIE_!" she punctuated with every straight-diving haymaker, breaking off his attack. And indeed, even his incredible stamina was beginning to wane under her onslaught, his sable hide turning brighter and more sickly as unique chemicals in his species' bodies were released away from the external tissue layers to collect in his deep subcutaneous cell linings around major organs to increase reaction time, regen rates and quite literally turning him red in response to his flagging success.

He pitched over and managed to python coil her in his tail once more and pull her into the upper stratosphere in his wake, her ears popped from the pressure and invisible fists filled her lungs but she was prepared; drawing forth dark energy bubbles filled with breathable gases to sustain her and slip into her nano-crystular internalised battle trance for thirty seconds. Body glowing from within from her power, Aran wrenched free, clambered up his spine with four bounding leaps, dodged his wings' efforts to dislodge her and buried an indigo glowing knife hand into the base of his skull.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage Two. Act III. Fidelity. Soundtrack choice: _Time Traveller _****_********______– ______********_********Peter Roe********_********______  
><em>_____********_**

* * *

><p>She controlled him as they fell, forcing him into a nose-dive through the clouds, until his wing caught her on the scruff of her own neck and tore her loose, to be smashed with a colossal hand, then booted away and above.<p>

They fell apart, Ridley tying to regain the skies but a flash of neutrino reave sparks of astonishing strength took all strength from his right wing, unbalancing him momentarily and then the Phoenix flame heralded a worsening of his plight.

Fawkes burst into existence next to his free-falling friend and dropped the Chozo short sword from his beak. It whirled end over end until Aran caught it perfectly by the fitted pommel even as she rocketed faster towards her foe beneath, who's size and subsequent air-resistance slowed his fall, her sword arm outstretched.

Aran landed upon his chest and cleaved him open, releasing what looked like lava from the wound in a great geyser as Ridley screamed in fury.

The Hunter forced the blade into the fresh partition, searching to pierce his black heart, blazing off embers and releasing founts of glowing liquid. The Dragon tore her open quickly with his talons, not daring to touch her for long, then managed to pierce both her arms with his tail even as she hacked and stabbed at him repeatedly, he clamped his jaws over her clavicle and nearly snapped her in two; feasting on her rich blood and marrow, alleviating his own wounds.

In desperation at the sudden turn, Aran let go of the sword stuck in her enemy's rib and freed her arms from the barb to agonizingly pry his jaws free from around her, even as she wilted from the plasma gushing through his teeth and flowing over her; crisping her flesh which pushed back all the while in a contest of destruction and renewal.

Aran pulled out one of her last tricks; phasing one of her arms up into his brain and clawed at the matter with all the electricity and warp sparks she could muster.

Ridley yanked her away, clasped her in both hands, trapping her arms at her sides, flipped over and pushed all the energy in his wings to accelerate them well into Mach 5; the sound barrier shattering several times into hyper-sonic speed, aiming to drive her into the rapidly approaching ground with all his terrible might.

But the Devil was far from helpless, affecting a full body phase transition, she moved through his abdomen and wrapped herself around his wing stem with a complex ground take-down grapple, then boosted fully into his back in a blaze of blue glory. The Dragon screamed as they accelerated further, unable to change his flight-path as she controlled one wing with a large stasis bubble while she gripped the other with her body; wrangling, bucking, twisting, flailing: it did him no good.

He struck the crust of the Earth in a cataclysm.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage Three. Act I. No Sound of Water. Soundtrack Choice: _Knights and Lords _****_********______– ______********_********Audiomachine**********

* * *

><p>The impact of their struggle was felt around the world, not to mention nearly bringing down the illuminated Hogwarts Wards almost a mile away.<p>

It took well over five minutes for the two combatants to find their feet again.

Ridley's left wing was mangled beyond repair as he crawled out of the crater that might have led to Australia. His snout bent, teeth missing and skin as bright as blood with a few black patches remaining; though his original skin tone soon re-coalesced together.

His breath came in gasps as ragged as his tattered wing.

Aran charge clothes-lined him as she passed in a blur of speed.

Vociferating both with his mind and his mouth as he chewed on dirt, Ridley bit into the stone of the plateau island they had landed on and chomped it up into gravel. Then he expelled the white hot pebbles in a cone blast.

Grey's sword flew with them, though not by the beast's command, and morphed into the power stave her foster father had used against Mother and her pet beast, across space and back through time. Aran revolved it like a helicopter blade between her fingers and batted the maelstrom away, sending up jets of steam through the now easing rain and off the surface of the lake.

Ridley bull-rushed her on all fours, she pole vaulted over him, opening the cut on his bulging brain and slicing the sinew of his damaged wing as she flew, eyes closed in a state of flow, with the halberd's reverse spear tip and axe head respectively.

The Dragon went for a diagonal to horizontal tail sweep that connected and sent Aran flying but she flipped over in mid-air to land feet first against a jutting boulder, bent her steel cord knees right down and surge off. She flew straight and true, taking Ridley under the chin with a biotic assisted upwards crack of the staff, he flew up and revolved over while Aran space boosted higher in a flash and brought the staff down in seamless reverse transition; halting his trip and slamming him back into the indented ground with a 'boom'.

But that landing was not his last as Aran flash-stepped and flip body-slammed him again, her weapon coming up and over her golden maned head in both hands.

She stabbed the pointy end of the staff in his gut, standing atop the tip, only for the monster beneath her to spit fine thin jets of plasma through pursed lips at his nemesis and forcing her to perform more acrobatics to avoid them, taking her weapon clasped between her ankles, deflecting the odd orb with manipulations of her lower legs and Achilles tendon as much as her arms and wrists.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage Three. Act II. Shadow at Evening. Soundtrack Choice: ****_********______Metroid Cinematica - ______********_****_Wings of Fire_ ******_********______– ______********_**Sam Dillard **

* * *

><p><em>"Prepare to die, Samus Aran!" <em>Ridley seethed once he'd pushed her back to a more comfortable distance.

The Hunter spun her staff to rest in her hand behind her back with an easy flourish. Outstretched palm facing him. "To die would be a great adventure."

Her nemesis grinned._ "_Death _______–________ is the only adventure you and I have left..."_

A curling front of solar power tore forward from his untouched wing, Aran Wushu wheeled aside, catching some of the power with the staff's neutrino capacitor as it passed and released a standard gluino charge beam from the tip that aggravated Ridley's chest wound.

Puffing himself up, he unleashed another concentrated lance of the fifth state of matter from his belly and Aran was forced to spin and slap the ground with such force that it pushed up a stalagmite of stone wide enough to halt the flow as he tracked her sprinting form.

She warp fired the molten mess at him with a flick of her hand, but his wing protected him once more and, catching on, he yanked up a projectile of his own. A granite rock that looked to be about three hundred metric tonnes and hurled it at her.

Aran raced forth, leapt onto the boulder and ran clean up and over it as it fell. She jumped out and fell like the sword of Damocles atop her foe and planted the spear into his clavicle.

Claws came up to scrape her off his shoulder, but she was already gone, the staff morphed and ripped free.

The Devil landed on his injured wing, seized the lower bundle of open weeping muscle with both hands, braced once and yanked back. The feature was torn out by root and stem.

_"GARGH! I'LL KILL YOU FOR THAT! EAT YOUR HEART!"_ Ridley promised, effulgent tears swimming from his remaining eye, even as his wing disappeared into nothing, no-longer a part of its host's body.

"Then come," Aran challenged him.

Unbalanced, Ridley's next sequence of attacks were slower, predictable, Aran had time to murmur a continuous incantation from the Tome, once again invoking the Ancient of endless hunger to enhance and fortify her foster-father's weapon as it morphed back into its Gladius form.

Her cut caught the gap between blade and tail and took it off in a single swipe.

The acidic other-worldly Magicks halted his own blood-stemming and flesh weaving back together.

"What _now_, you piece of filth!" she jeered, the reverse revolution taking off a larger chunk of the tail further down.

Ridley's balance was shot, his rudder cut, he took another great lunge but Aran simply allowed him to fall on her blade and for his own momentum to rip himself from belly to throat.

He shrieked loud enough to chase the night away.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Stage Three Act III. A Handful of Dust. Soundtrack Choice: ****_********______Metroid Cinematica - ______********_****_Orphan_ ******_********______– ______********_**Sam Dillard  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"Do you want to know a secret?"<p>

_"STAY – STILL!" _he screamed, trying to rend her apart. She danced aside._  
><em>

"I told it to you before, but you wouldn't remember, would you? It was the only moment in my life when I couldn't possibly be afraid of you!"

_"Indulge me then!"_

"I don't feel fear as you do. As any animal does. It's not just a reflex of my flesh, it's not even an instinct or an emotion. It's my credo."

_"What?!"_

"Honour is a gift men give themselves. Justice is a creation of the weak to hold the strong accountable. Now fear. _Fear_ is _power – _when I was a little girl, before you and your _insects_ brought your bombs and your guns onto the people I love, even now. I knew it as my greatest friend and teacher. I'd _embrace_ it. I'd climb a tree none of the boys would dare, capture and release animals they couldn't track or wouldn't touch."

_"Sounds as if you weren't very careful! Went around sticking your little snot-nosed monkey face into things that didn't concern you!"_

"On the contrary, I was more careful than children my age _ever_ were. But I'll freely admit I embraced adventure unlike any other. I trusted in that hidden mentor, who taught me that danger was the only way to_ grow_. Haven't you ever wondered why I never ran, why I walked up to your feet, as bold as the day?"

_"Because your pathetic fight or flight triggers hadn't actualised yet?!"_

"No. I was too scared to run. And what did that accomplish?"

_"What are you even _talking _about?!"_

"It stayed your breath. If but for a few seconds. While everyone else around me was slaughtered. I survived then, and I have survived this long because I came to value what I despised. Take joy in what I should hate and take refuge in the terror you've always inspired in me! I even thought we could be best friends when I first laid eyes on you! I knew what to do to make you stop and think, until the truth was exposed and you _devoured the woman who bore me!_ Your differences_ inspired_ me with all the wonders of this great and never-ending Universe! Isn't that beautiful?! Isn't that grand?!"

_"You have lost – what's_ left _of your goddamn mind..."_

"It might seem that way from a certain point of view. But I could never let you carry on to the long sleep. Letting you stew in your own misery for a thousand years until you lost what was left of that animal mind of yours was more than enough to satiate my desire for revenge. Do you remember what I brought you? How I showed you your folly? What came of blood for blood, monster?!"

_"DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-DIE-_DIIIIE!_" _Every attack punctuated, every attempt foiled.

"I didn't think so."

The sword flashed again.

_"YOU – FUCKING – _BITCH!_ YOU TOOK MY HAND!"_

"_All_ this time, _all_ our battles, and you've still learnt less than nothing. _Beast_."

_"RAAAAAAAAAARGH! GONNA' _EAT YOU ALIVE!_"_

The Dragon charged wildly, unheeding of any danger in his madness, maw gaping. And at that exact moment, Fawkes flamed into flight and released Aran's fully loaded double rifle from his talons as he passed to land the grip directly into her right hand. Aran's spell switched weapons in a trance.

"Sure, here's an appetizer."

Both triggers pulled. The barrels exploded with violet flame and sent both massive slugs into Ridley's mouth at the most opportune moment imaginable, puncturing the chemical glands that produced his plasma and detonating the matter out of several orifices she had carved into his belly and blowing a chunk of his head and crest out.

For a moment he swayed on the spot, then he vomited up a portion of his insides and fell face first into them.

All was quiet on the tiny island. Then.

_"You think - kah - killing me, will evuah, _ever_ give you _peace?!_"_

Aran had stepped a few paces away and presented her back to her nemesis. Signifying that he was no threat to her. "I'm not looking for peace. Heh... true peace... no, just a moment, just a moment in time. And you are the next in a long line of them." She sheathed the sword in the inner pocket of the Witching Cloak.

_"Is that all you've got, Zah-mus?! Heh, heh! You - you ain't _shit!_"_

"IT'S _OVER!_" Aran spun back to roar.

_"FUCK YOU! YOU THINK I HAVEN'T HEALED FROM _WORSE_ THAN THIS! WHEN MY VESSELS, BONES AND ORGANS KNIT BACK TOGETHER, I'M GONNA – "_

"I said. It's – over. If I walk away from you, you will forever cease to be."

_"Don't you _dare _turn your back on me, Aran! As if you would do that. After what you've revealed! Everything you are, _every_ piece of good you ever achieved. _All of it_ – you owe to _me_."_

Aran stopped stock still as she strode away. Then she half turned.

"Quite. And it is for that reason that your demise always provides me with much catharsis. Unlike most beings in the Universe, I am very comfortable with the rationale of revenge. You started _all_ of this – and I will _always_ finish it."

_"I'll see you in _hell_, Aran!"_

"... Perhaps... but you'll burn there long before me."

Ridley howled the laughter of the damned as Aran looked up to behold the ancient castle far off in the dark distance and the coming dawn.

_"What do you see there? _Yourself_?!"_

The Devil did not look at her age-old nemesis.

_"By your own spirit, by your own hand... when you _truly_ kill me. _You will go back to hell_."_

Aran was mute to his statement. The wind causing the rain to lash her still form once more; baptising her in blood and fire.

Her head swiveled almost curiously around to behold the Dragon, wheezing on the shattered ground.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Soundtrack choice: _Valhalla Rising OST _****_**_- _**_****_**_**_The Return _**_**_**_************– Peter Peter & Peter Kyed  
><strong>**********_

* * *

><p>She stopped in front of him as he raised himself up on his knees, the Magick eating him from the inside, rendering him as weak as his victims.<p>

Aran raised a palm languidly, a telekinetic battering ram smashed into the monster and threw him back to slam into a large rock face, spreading him against the slab as if he were Prometheus chained to the Caucasus.

The Hunter wormed her fingers into one of his many wounds and began to rip the stitching of flesh, to tear the seams of his gut lining clean open.

Ridley screamed and screamed a sound of unrivaled excruciation, not to mention violation as Aran shoved her arms through the membrane into his entrails and leant in as close as possible so she could look him in his remaining eye and savour his helplessness at her hands.

And then it was over. She pulled the steaming bags and tubes of offal free, along with the primary organs on top and dumped the mess under his nose as he expired.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Soundtrack choice:_ Mado Kara Mieru - (feat. Lia, Aoi Tada, Kaori Omura)_ _– _Christopher Tin**

* * *

><p>Fawkes alighted on her shoulder as heavy as happiness and freedom as she walked away and never looked back.<p>

She made her way down to the pebbled shore as the Bogart's body burst into red flames that etched themselves into the very stone, forming a sigil of the Dead Eagles.

Aran gained strength with every step. A wild and indescribable joy filled her heart as Fawkes wept against her head and gave her his tears.

It was over. For the first and last time she had vanquished him forever.

Now her life could truly begin. And truly end.

Another day.


End file.
